Talk:These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)
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I read this book By Christopher Ishawood called Goodbye to Berlin, and at the end of the story about Sally Bowles I really wanted to know what happened to her
This song is thought to be about Jean Ross, the inspiration for Christopher Ishawood's charectr the brilliant Sally Bowles, that went on to cover the spanish Civil war...
from this page http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_19990815/ai_n13941214/pg_2
In other cases the portrait seems to harm neither the sitter nor the artist. Christopher Isherwood's character Sally Bowles, who had her most famous embodiment in the figure of Liza Minnelli in the film Cabaret, was inspired by Jean Ross, a young woman of Scottish descent who found herself in Weimar Berlin and ended up rooming with Isherwood.
Athough the relationship was not sexual or romantic, Ross clearly worked her magic on Isherwood. Ross seems to have been every bit as exotic and exciting as Sally Bowles, and her real life was almost as fantastic. After meeting and bewitching the lyricist Eric Maschwitz, she inspired the lyrics for These Foolish Things. Nor was journalist Claude Cockburn immune to her charms.
They met in the Cafe Royale in London, and after Cockburn sent his wife and daughter back to America because it was too dangerous to remain in London, he and Ross embarked on an affair. He was the love of her life and she had a daughter by him. The relationship was as much a meeting of minds as anything else. As journalists they covered the Spanish Civil War and were committed to the communist cause. When Cockburn left her, Ross was devastated. The rest of her life was spent campaigning for communism.
But as Ross fought for world revolution, her fictional counterpart enjoyed a life of her own. According to her daughter, Sarah Cockburn, Ross rarely mentioned her fictional alter ego - but when she did it was with an ambivalence that many literary originals have felt when confronted with images of themselves. When Isherwood's I Am A Camera, which has Sally Bowles at its centre, was first staged, Ross told her daughter: "The girl in this story is supposed to be me, but I'm sure I sang better than Christopher gave me credit for. And I never had green fingernails in my life."
