Who Are They? (Contemporary Character)

Sally Bowles is a character from the book 'Goodbye to Berlin'. Her character is based on a real person named Jean Ross who was a friend of the author Christopher Isherwood. Bowles character completely revolves around the life of how Berlin was in the time period - she loves sex and is shockingly open about it ad not at the best of times. She is a singer aspiring to be an actress who wants to be different even though realistically she is like the rest of the Berlin. During that era, red shades of nail polish were the most popular but Sally always fashioned green nails and this may have been to make her stand out more from the crowd. She tries to portray herself as someone with loads of confidence, but underneath she has a lot of insecurities.

'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.' - quote from the book 'Goodbye to Berlin' of the description of Sally Bowles.

The 1972 film, 'Cabaret' is based off of 'Goodbye to Berlin'. Sally Bowles is played by Liza Minnelli which I think she portrays Sally Bowles really well. This version of her is how I imagine her to be - someone with an edgy haircut so that she stands out from the crowd as well as showing off her outgoing personality. Her eyelashes remind me of the one underlash that Malcolm McDowell wore in 'A Clockwork Orange' as Alex DeLarge because they are so long for Sally to make her eyes pop and stand out, as does the long underlash of Alex looks to make him stand out from his gang. When she is on stage performing she has a beauty mark on her cheek but offstage she doesn't. She also wears a chignon on the back of her head full of short curls to portray her stage character. In the film her fashion is of mostly wearing black with one other colour. She has a pale face, which was the trend of the 1930s Berlin, so maybe she wore a lot of black to make her look even paler. I also noticed in one scene she was holding an umbrella over her head and a huge shaded hat in another which she did to keep her pale complexion. Throughout the film I started to see her personality unravel and noticed she is very self centred and talks constantly about herself.