NOT since, Joe Louis pounded Max Schmelling under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden has anyone taken a beating quite like Sabrina. But the amazing thing is that Sabrina is still on her feet. She is on them so firmly that she has just achieved her biggest triumph — a solo spot in the Royal Variety Command Performance at the London Palladium. That's something most artists would give their autographs for — on a blank cheque.
Don't think it has not taken courage for Sabrina to climb so high whatever may be said about her selection. No one, except perhaps Moma Liberace's devoted son. has taken such a hammering from the critics like Sabrina.
She has been bombarded by a verbal Alamein: staffed by a salvo of adjectives; cremated by a fire of caustic comment. She has been slapped, kicked and battered by words harder than any stones. She has been doubted and even insulted. There have been kind words though, and encouragement.
To survive all that, it takes more than confidence. It takes guts, and for that reason alone we should say: "Well done" to Miss Norma Sykes. one-time Blackpool snack-bar girl who is to perform before our Queen.
There is another tale of courage in the life of Sabrina.
A fight against polio. with which she was stricken when she was just a girl. She fought to walk - and walked right into the headlines in a profession that knows more heartbreaks than successes and where only the fittest survive.
QUICK FAME
Remember her debut on television in the Arthur Askey show? She never opened her mouth, but she became a household name inside a month.
Remember when the show ended and the critics prepared for her theatrical funeral. While every-one expected her to fade from the picture, Sabrina went to "school." She learned deportment drama, singing and elocution.
Comedians began to introduce quips about her figure into their acts. They did not know that while they laughed a group of American film men had flown the Atlantic to see her. They were impressed.
Last summer she went to Blackpool. and though she was not the perfect artist she was one of the successes of the show. She had a lot to learn but she was entertaining.
Then there was the Women of the Year luncheon . You don't get into that easily. But Sabrina did even though there was a misunderstanding about her speech.
UNFAIR
Popularity, no matter what the attraction, is one of the yard sticks of success in the present-day field of entertainment.
Whether the means by which it is achieved is built on a gimmick or on experience does not matter. And those who say that Sabrina is overstepping seasoned performers into the Royal Show must ask themselves if these seasoned entertainers would stop the traffic in a Leeds street, or cause obstruction in every city they visited to open unimportant places.
Besides. Sabrina's attraction is something that does not improve with time. No one wants to see a cover girl when she is fair, fat and forty.
It's a shame, but show business encourages green eyes and jealousy. It is so unfair. Sabrina did not ask to be chosen. Now that she has been, is she expected to stand down?
People in their thousands flock to see her, yet some say it is wrong for her to appear before the Royal family. Rot and fiddle-sticks. Such narrow-minded ravings deserve to be ignored. One would think that she was some striptease dancer instead of a girl who got a break and took advantage of it in the only way she could.
Good luck to you. Sabrina. I hope you slay the stiff shirts at the Palladium. But it won't be easy.
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