Sally Bowles

fictional character

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Article History

Sally Bowles, fictional character, the eccentric heroine of Christopher Isherwood’s novella Sally Bowles (1937) and of his collected stories Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Bowles is a young iconoclastic, minimally talented English nightclub singer in the Berlin of the Weimar Republic period (1919–33). She paints her fingernails green, affects an artless decadent manner, and has woeful luck in her relationships with men.

Isherwood’s tales about Sally Bowles and her acquaintances became the basis for John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera (1951; film, 1955). Fred Ebb and John Kander turned this material into the much-acclaimed stage musical Cabaret (1966; film, 1972).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.