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Holmes, Su 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4243-8337
(2011)
'Whoever heard of anyone being a screaming success for doing nothing?': 'Sabrina', the BBC and television fame in the 1950s.
Media History, 17 (1).
pp. 33-48.
ISSN 1368-8804
Abstract
Drawing on archival sources from the BBC Written Archive Centre, including press coverage, memos and scripts, this article seeks to contribute to historical work on celebrity by exploring the discourses surrounding television fame through the prism of ‘Sabrina’—a young woman made famous by BBC television in the mid-1950s as the ‘bosomy blonde who didn't talk’. It is particularly productive to excavate this case study of Sabrina right now, when popular media discourse is saturated with debate about the apparently declining currency of modern fame—a debate which often positions female celebrities centre stage. Indeed, in 1955 one BBC official asked a question which might seem decidedly familiar to celebrity audiences today: ‘[Sabrina] is a wonder of our time which makes us absolutely terrified of the power of television. Whoever heard of anyone being a screaming success for doing nothing?’ In returning to the case study of Sabrina, this article examines a so far neglected persona in the institutional, cultural and ideological contexts which shaped early (British) television fame.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Film and Television Studies (former - to 2012) Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media |
| Depositing User: | Katherine Humphries |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Nov 2012 12:43 |
| Last Modified: | 21 Jul 2023 09:20 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/40280 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/13688804.2011.532376 |
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