Sally Bowles

Sally Bowles

Sally Bowles () is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character originally debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press. The story was later republished in the 1939 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. The character of Sally Bowles later inspired Truman Capote's Holly Golightly in his novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the character also has appeared in novels by other authors.In 1979, critic Howard Moss of The New Yorker noted the peculiar resiliency of the character: "It is almost fifty years since Sally Bowles shared the recipe for a Prairie oyster with Herr Issyvoo in a vain attempt to cure a hangover" and yet the character in subsequent permutations lives on "from story to play to movie to musical to movie-musical."

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