Norma Sykes

About Norma Sykes

Norma Sykes, better known as Sabrina or Sabby, was a 1950s English glamour model who progressed to a minor film career.

Sabrina was one of a host of exotic, glamorous (British) starlets ... modelled on the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Lana Turner; others included Diana Dors, Belinda Lee, Shirley Eaton and Sandra Dorne.

Her main claim to fame was her hourglass figure of prodigious breasts coupled with a tiny 17" waist. Sabrina had a natural waist-hip ratio of 0.47, from the waist measurement of 17" and her hips at 36" when she first started modelling, although she deliberately filled out in later years when advised by several model agencies. During the late 1950s and early '60s Sabrina was called "Britain's answer to Jayne Mansfield".

Born in Stockport, Cheshire, she moved to London in 1952 as a sixteen-year-old, and did some nude modelling, the evidence of which she later tried to destroy. In 1955, she was chosen to play a dumb blonde sidekick in Arthur Askey's new ITV series, Before Your Very Eyes, and this soon made her a household name. The Goon Show scripts are littered with references to her bosom such as "by the measurements of Sabrina!" and "by the sweaters of Sabrina!". British aircrews of the 1950s Royal Air Force dubbed part of the Hawker Hunter jet fighter plane "Sabrinas" owing to two large humps on the underside of the aircraft.

In the late 1950s the British truck manufacturer ERF produced a semi-forward control HGV with a short protruding bonnet – those vehicles were also nicknamed "Sabrinas" because they had "a little more in front."

She made her motion-picture debut in Stock Car, in 1955. She then appeared in a small role in the 1956 film, Ramsbottom Rides Again. In her third movie role, Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957) she had a non-speaking role in which, despite sharing equal billing with the star Alastair Sim on posters and appearing in many publicity stills in school uniform, she was required only to sit up in bed wearing a nightdress, reading a book whilst the action took place around her.

Her penultimate movie role was in the horror movie The Ice House (1969), as a replacement for Jayne Mansfield who had died in a car crash two years before. Her last film was a year later in the western The Phantom Gunslinger (1970), in which she starred alongside Troy Donahue.

In 1967, she married Dr Harold Melsheimer, a Hollywood gynecologist/obstetrician, though they divorced ten years later. She lives in Hollywood.

In 1974, the British motoring press gave the name "Sabrinas" to the oversized pairs of protruding rubber bumper blocks added to the MG MGB, Midget and Triumph TR6 sports cars, when US auto safety regs mandated sturdier impact protection. The name stuck and is used worldwide.