Jean Ross

Jean Iris Ross was a British war correspondent, actress, and cabaret singer who inspired Christopher Isherwood's famous character of Sally Bowles. In addition to inspiring the character of Sally Bowles, Ross was also the muse of Eric Maschwitz, who wrote the haunting lyrics of the jazz standard "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" after their affair ended.

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Ross was the child of a Scottish cotton classifier for the Bank of Egypt. Her mother was the daughter of Charles Caudwell, an affluent industrialist. As a young girl, Jean returned to England to attend school at Leatherhead Court in Surrey. A brilliant pupil, she completed all the required curricula by age sixteen yet was informed she must attend school for another year. Seeking expulsion, she feigned a pregnancy, whereupon she was confined to an insane asylum lest she "contaminate" the other young girls. Her parents next enrolled her in the Pensionnat Mistral, an elite Swiss finishing school, from which she fled or was expelled.

Traveling to London, Ross enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She soon won a coveted acting prize, which entitled her to choose any role she wished in the forthcoming production. When she chose the role of Phèdre, however, her teachers broke their promise and told her she lacked the necessary life experience to play the part. Hurt by this betrayal, Ross departed the school. She next appeared in Why Sailors Leave Home (1930) portraying a harem houri due to her dark eyes, olive complexion, and partial fluency in Arabic. While in London, Ross heard that UFA, the German motion picture company in the Weimar Republic, was seeking young actresses.

Despite not speaking a word of German, Ross journeyed to Weimar Berlin, where she worked by day as a fashion model and by night as a chanteuse in underground cabarets. In October 1930, she met gay English novelist Christopher Isherwood. They soon became intimate friends. By 1931, Isherwood and Ross shared lodgings at Nollendorfstrasse 17. During this time, both Ross and Isherwood were sexually pursued by John Blomshield, a wealthy bisexual aristocrat upon whom the character of Maximilian von Heune was based in the film Cabaret (1972). Blomshield abruptly dumped both Isherwood and Ross when he lost interest.

While in Berlin, Ross had many sexual affairs, including a tryst with jazz pianist Peter van Eyck, who later starred in The Wages of Fear (1953). In the early summer of 1931, after their affair ended, Ross realized she was pregnant. She prevailed upon gay writer Christopher Isherwood to help in obtaining an abortion. Ross nearly died after the abortion procedure went awry. Visiting Ross during her recovery in a Berlin hospital, Isherwood perceived hostility from the hospital staff who believed that he had forced her to undergo the abortion. These tragicomic events inspired Isherwood's 1937 novella, "Sally Bowles."

Isherwood's 1937 novella was later included in his work "Goodbye to Berlin" (1939), which was adapted into a play, a musical, and multiple motion pictures, including I Am a Camera (1955) and Cabaret (1972). Although Ross insisted that she was completely unlike Sally Bowles, Isherwood based much of his fictionalized portrait upon Ross, including her distinctive conversational style, her attire, her casual liaisons, her ill-fated romances with Blomshield and Eyck, and her near-fatal abortion.

When Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, Ross fled to England, where she joined Harry Pollitt's British Communist Party. During this time, she began an ill-advised relationship with English journalist Claud Cockburn, a serial philanderer and debtor. Ross may also have become romantically involved with English poet John Cornford, the first British volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War.

When the Spanish Civil War began, Ross served as a war correspondent for both "The Daily Express" and "The Daily Worker." She was embedded with Republican troops on the front lines and endured aerial bombings by the German Junkers (Ju 52s) of the Condor Legion. She traveled at the Southern front, where she survived machine gun fire and numerous other near-death encounters. She later reported from besieged Madrid and was bombarded each day by enemy artillery and aircraft. By the time the besieged city fell to Francisco Franco's forces in March 1939, a pregnant Ross had escaped to England. Sixty days after the fall of Madrid, Ross gave birth to a daughter by Claud Cockburn. Their child, Sarah Caudwell, was the only offspring of their unhappy union. In August 1939, ninety days after the birth of their daughter, Cockburn deserted Ross and their newborn child to cohabit with a new lover.

After Cockburn abandoned Ross and their child, she devoted her life to raising her daughter as a single mother. However, after the widespread success of Cabaret (1972), Claud Cockburn vindictively leaked to the tabloids that Ross had inspired the character of Sally Bowles. Consequently, tabloid reporters hounded Ross for interviews. Such encounters were often hostile as the tabloid reporters only wanted to talk about sex, while Ross only wanted to talk about socialism. Throughout her later years, Ross remained a devout Stalinist, and she continued to be politically active in a number of causes ranging from protesting nuclear weapons to boycotting apartheid South Africa to opposing the Vietnam War. She died of cancer on 27 April 1973 at her flat in London.