| Daily Mirror - by Donald Zec
8 August 1960
STAR TURN makes a transatlantic phone call to A LUCKY NUMBER
DO you remember a quivering, blonde phenomenon with a mighty bust but meagre conversation, who answered to the dainty little name ... Sabrina?
Do you spend sleepless nights wondering how this breathy, bouncy dreadnought with the 41in. armament is faring all on her lonesome in l'il ol' New York?
Well, anyway... I got to thinking about this dame when I was driving past the Earl's Court, London, home (not the Stadium) where this Lancashire sex-pot used to live.
(The Borough Council could put Sabrina Stayed Here — 41,19, 36" on the wall — If they've got the plaque.)
I looked up at The Actual Window where she used to lean out and stop the traffic, and a vision of this 9 stone nymph floated into my mind.
Naturally, this knocked over all the other thoughts, right, left and centre.
So I cabled colleague Roland Watkins in New York asking him to tell "Sabby" — sweet name — to stand by for a phone call from London.
And I must tell you at once that "Little Miss Treasure Chest" is a changed woman.
When I last talked to her, a couple of years ago, she was an almost word less wonder, wandering with busty bewilderment through a world of fallen aitches and 'earty laughter.
Today, in America, she has her own forty-minute cabaret show.
She has just moved, into a luxurious apartment in New York's exclusive Sutton Place.
And rich, unattached celebrities have wined and dined her at the most expensive places without our heroine batting a green eyelid.
IT was eleven a.m. her time I when my phone call woke Sabrina in the king-sized bed in her air-conditioned bedroom, Her Americanised "hullo" was very sleepy, and very husky.
She explained she had a bad cold that had spread to her chest — which adds up to a mighty lot of germs.
"How's America treating you? " I asked.
"It's so wonderful," she drawled dream ily. "You know what they're calling me now — The Eighth Wonder of the World."
The two-way radio by which we spoke faded frequently. When I asked her: "Why do they call you the Eighth Wonder of the World?" she replied:
"In Washington. Isn't it marvellous?"
"How different are you from the girl I once sat on the floor with in Earl's Court, eating ham sandwiches?
"Completely," she said stoutly.
"Are you more mature? "
"Par'm me?"
"More MATURE!" I yelled, "mature, like Victor Mature."
"I don't get you," Sabrina said.
"Do you feel you're more grown up?" I hollered desperately.
"You can say I'm more mature," she said, and I said I'd make a note.
"Are you wiser too?" I asked her.
"Uh huh."
"More intelligent? "
" Uh huh."
" More articulate?"
"'Uh huh."
"Anything else?"
"Well, I think I've got wore poise, more sophistication. I've developed enormously."
I must have choked or something, because she swiftly added, "I don't mean my figure - actually my face has got a lot smaller. I'm talking about my mind."
"You know, the people in the States have real respect for me now — it's fantastic. They accept me a person and an entertainer. I'm not just regarded as a, well..."
"A big bust?" I suggested,
"Exactly," she said gratefully. "I've travelled a lot now and do you know what I've discovered — travel broadens the mind."
"No kidding," I said, ."Tell me — what do you do when you're not work ing?
"Well, I have my friends," she said, "like Joe di Maggio, Oleg Cassini (the designer), and Robert Evans, the actor, is my..." the line faded at this point.
"Your what?" I shouted.
"MY SECRET DATE!" she screamed — confidentially.
She then told me her latest boy friend is a young thirty- three-year-old — a well-known New York heart specialist — and we had a little chuckle over that.
Sabrina, who is a singer, in case you wondered, is about to make a film called "Satan Wore High Heels."
She doesn't play Satan — but the heels are hers.
Finally I asked her: "Have you acquired a new philosophy on life?"
"Par'm me?" she asked.
"A new philosophy — have you got a new slant on things, now you're a suc cess?"
"In a way," she said. " I'm certainly happier because I know where I'm going now."
"Where are you going then?" I asked, just as the line faded again.
"What?"
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" I roared in exasperation.
"Las Vegas," said the Eighth Wonder of the World. |
