Sally Bowles

Sally Bowles
First appearance	Sally Bowles (1937 novella)
Last appearance	Cabaret (1972 film)
Created by	Christopher Isherwood

Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by Christopher Isherwood. She originally appeared in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press. The story was later republished in the novel Goodbye to Berlin.

Sally is a central character in the 1951 John Van Druten stage play I Am a Camera, the 1955 film of the same name, the 1966 musical stage adaptation Cabaret and the 1972 film adaptation of the musical.

Sally Bowles is based on Jean Ross, a woman Isherwood knew during the years he lived in Berlin between the World Wars (1929—1933). Isherwood took the last name "Bowles" from Paul Bowles, whom he had met in Berlin in 1931. Explaining his choice, he wrote, "[I] liked the sound of it and also the looks of its owner". He describes Sally by writing:

I noticed that her finger-nails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette smoking and as dirty as a little girl's. She was dark....Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.

In the novel Sally is British, purporting to be the daughter of a Lancashire mill owner and an heiress. She is a singer at an underground club called The Lady Windermere. Isherwood describes her singing as poor but surprisingly effective "because of her startling appearance and her air of not caring a curse what people thought of her". She aspires to be an actress or in the alternative to ensnare a wealthy man to keep her. Unsuccessful at both, Sally departs Berlin and is last heard from in the form of a postcard sent from Rome with no return address.

Isherwood apparently began writing the story that would become Sally Bowles in 1933, writing to friend Olive Mangeot in July of that year that he had written it. He continued to revise it over the next three years, completing his final draft on June 21, 1936. In a letter to poet and editor John Lehmann dated January 16, 1936, Isherwood briefly outlined the piece, envisioning it as part of his novel The Lost (which became Mr Norris Changes Trains). He describes it as akin to the work of Anthony Hope and as "an attempt to satirize the romance-of-prostitution racket". Later in 1936 Isherwood submitted the piece to Lehmann for possible publication in his literary magazine, New Writing. Lehmann liked the piece but felt that it was too long for his magazine. He was also concerned about the inclusion in the manuscript of Sally's abortion, fearing that his printers might refuse to typeset it, and about the possibility that Jean Ross might file a libel action. In a January 1937 letter, Isherwood explained his belief that without the abortion incident Sally would be reduced to "a silly little capricious bitch" and that the omission would leave the story without a climax. Ross hesitated in giving her permission to publish, worried that the abortion episode, which was not fictional, would strain her relationship with her family. Ross ultimately gave her permission and Hogarth published the volume later that year.

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