Jean Ross

Biography

Jean Iris Ross was a war correspondent, thespian, and cabaret singer who inspired Christopher Isherwood's famous character of Sally Bowles. In addition to inspiring the character of Bowles, Ross also was the muse for composer Eric Maschwitz who wrote his haunting jazz standard "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)" after their affair ended. Born in 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 for her education 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 a sanatorium least she "contaminate" the other young girls. She next was enrolled in the Pensionnat Mistral, an elite Swiss finishing school, from which she later fled or was expelled. Returning to England, Ross enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She soon garnered a coveted acting prize which entitled her to choose whichever role she wished in the forthcoming production. When she chose the part of Phèdre, however, her teachers broke their promise and told her that she lacked the necessary life experience to play the character. Hurt by this betrayal, Ross departed the school. She next appeared in Why Sailors Leave Home (1930) where she was cast as 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 Weimar Republic, was seeking young actresses. Despite not speaking a word of German, Ross journeyed to Berlin where she worked by day as a fashion model and by night as a chanteuse in gay cabarets. In 1931, she met gay English novelist Christopher Isherwood. Eventually, Isherwood and Ross and shared lodgings at Nollendorfstrasse 17. They soon became intimate friends. 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 an affair in 1931 with jazz pianist Peter van Eyck, later star of The Wages of Fear (1953). When 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 went awry, and Isherwood frequently visited Ross in the hospital. Wrongly assuming that Isherwood was the father, the hospital staff belittled the gay author for impregnating Ross and then callously forcing her to have abortion. This tragicomic scenario later inspired Isherwood's 1937 short story, "Sally Bowles." Isherwood's story was included in his later 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 had already fled to England where she officially joined Harry Pollitt's British Communist Party. During this time, she purportedly became romantically and sexually involved with English poet John Cornford who was the first British volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War. Ross also began a relationship with English journalist Claud Cockburn. 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, three months after the birth of their daughter, Cockburn deserted Ross and their newly born child to co-habitate with a new lover. After her abandonment by Cockburn, Ross devoted her life to raising her daughter as a single mother. However, after the widespread success of Cabaret (1972), Claud Cockburn leaked to the tabloids that Ross had inspired the character of Sally Bowles. Consequently, tabloids persistently 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 was a devout Marxist, 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.