Sally Bowles is based on Jean Ross, a woman Isherwood knew during the years he lived in Berlin between the World Wars (1931—1933).
Sally Field | Paul Bowles | Sally Phillips | Sally Kellerman | Sally Struthers | Sally Jessy Raphael | Sally Hemings | Sally Ride | Sally Potter | Sally Kirkland | X-Legged Sally | Sally Rand | Peter Bowles | Sally Perdue | Sally O'Neil | Sally | When Harry Met Sally... | Samuel Bowles | Sally Price | Benton & Bowles | William A. Bowles | Sally Timms | Sally Quinn | Sally Oldfield | Sally Knyvette | Sally Gray | Sally Bedell Smith | Brian Bowles | Andrew Parker Bowles | William Bowles |
Upon graduating, she appeared in productions for the National Theatre and in the West End of London, including Stephen Sondheim´s A Little Night Music with Jean Simmons and Hermione Gingold, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Great Expectations, and played "Polly" in The Boy Friend with Glynis Johns, "Sally Bowles" in Cabaret, and "Moll" in Moll Flanders.
Sally Bowles has been played by Julie Harris in I Am a Camera, the 1951 adaptation of Goodbye to Berlin, and the 1955 film adaptation of the same name, Jill Haworth in the original 1966 Broadway production of Cabaret, Judi Dench in the original 1968 West End stage version of Cabaret and Liza Minnelli in Bob Fosse's 1972 film adaptation of the musical.
Jean Ross was working as a nightclub singer in Weimar Germany in 1931 when she shared lodgings with Isherwood, becoming immortalised as the "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles in Isherwood's 1939 memoir Goodbye to Berlin.