The curious incident of
Cinderella Nightingale
In 1958, Robert Muller's novel Cinderella Nightingale was released. Sabrina the author and publisher for libel and all copies of the book were withdrawn from sale (except for Australia where I found a hardback first edition!)
A 'revised' edition was released by Pan in 1962.
Written by Robert Muller, and published in 1958 by Arthur Barker, Cinderella Nightingale is "a tale of an ambitious shop-girl". A Cinderella Bibliography reports about Cinderella Nightingale:
“What human blood was to a vampire, the devotion of the camera was to Iris Littlewood.” Raped by her father when she was thirteen, Iris tries to make a career for herself. She works first as a waitress, then does some modeling. Endowed with a mythically gorgeous body, but with little talent for acting, she gets a break with a photographer, Miles Meyerstein, who gives up his career to become her agent. He succeeds in getting publicity for her, and she becomes a top professional model. She begins as Mona Martin, but Miles gives her the name that gets her ahead–first Tess Nightingale, then Cinderella Nightingale. Miles falls in love with her, but she is incapable of loving in return, casts him off when he asks her to kiss him, takes a new publicity agent named Angell and manages, in Monte Carlo, to get cast in the leading role of Ed Hochstetter’s new movie Adam’s Eve. In a desperate effort to regain her attention Miles gambles everything away, even his Leica camera. She goes to Hollywood: it “seems our Cinderella found her Prince Charming” in Hochstetter, who is as cold as she. Miles goes to the beach with his old friend Sam, they meet another young girl who would like to be a starlet, and the story starts over, albeit cruel, empty, and painful."]
It was a "sizzling, up-to-the-minute close-up of the amoral machine that turns a beautiful body into big business'. Its story of Iris Littlewood, an ambitious shop-girl who becomes 'the darling of the photographers, the prey of the columnists".
There is ITN news footage of Sabrina arriving at court - sadly neither the 9 seconds of footage nor the date is available, but the summary is: SABRINA AT LAW COURTS: She arrives at Court for hearing of libel case against a Publishing company. SCU Sabrina arrives at Court escort: Sal by a man - walks towards and holds on end. She is dressed completely in black and covered up::" (Source)
Sabrina discusses the incident in a 1961 magazine article...
I was libelled
Taking a rise out of Sabrina became almost a national pastime. A book called "Cinderella Nightingale" was published, and the heroine resembled me too closely for there to be any mistake as to who it was intended to be.
The additions in this case gave me no alternative but to sue the publisher and the author for libel. I won the case, and all the remaining copies of the book had to be recalled from circulation. By then, however, much of the damage had been done.
29 June 1958 - BATTLE OF THE BLONDES.
From Roderick Mann in London
SABRINA may take legal action to stop production of a film she claims is based on her own life.
The film is "Cinderella Nightingale" — which tells the story of a blonde's rise to fame on the strength of her vital statistics.
Already Sabrina has had the book on which the film is based withdrawn from the bookstalls.
She said this week: " 'Cinderella Nightingale' was all about me. They said it wasn't, of course, but it was.
"And it contained a cruel libel against my father and myself. I had no alternative but to stop it."
Sabrina said the film would cut right across a film she was planning to make — "The Sabrina Story."
At Associated-British Studios at Elstree, where "Cinderella Nightingale" will be made, Carole Lesley, who is to star in the film, said: "Fancy Sabrina thinking she could get my film stopped.
"What conceit. And, anyway — how can she suggest I'm going to caricature her in the film? There's no comparison."
In the book "J. Lee Thompson" by Steve Chibnall, it says:
After Ice Cold, Lee Thompson made two more monochrome dramas of men and women in 'fraught' circumstances' - No Trees in the Street and Tiger Bay, postponing his planned starring vehicle for Carole Lesley, Cinderella Nightingale.
Robert Muller's book about the exploitation of feminine beauty in the film world was published in 1958 and would have made a fascinating exercise in self-reflexivity both for Lesley and for Lee Thompson.
When it was published in paperback by Pan in 1962 the advertising blurb called it a 'sizzling, up-to-the-minute close-up of the amoral machine that turns a beautiful body into big business'.
Its story of Iris Littlewood, an ambitious shop-girl who becomes 'the darling of the photographers, the prey of the columnists, the favourite "pin-up" of a fickle public' has resonances in the careers of both Diana Dors and the more tragic Carole Lesley.
The growing demands for Lee Thompson's services meant that the film was never made, and Lesley was obliged to make Operation Bullshine (Gilbert Gunn, 1959) instead. A similar story by Muller was filmed by Val Guest in 1964 as The Beauty Jungle. Ironically, it starred Janette Scott, who had played the ambitious ingenue in Lee Thompson's The Good Companions.
EDITOR'S NOTE 2011
It's interesting that Diana Dors and Carole Lesley (click the link for a spookily familiar biography) were mentioned as being the 'real' Cinderella, but not Sabrina who found it most libellous. Actually, Carole was lined up to be in the film.