Jean Ross

Uncommon card · No. 181825

Jean Iris Ross Cockburn (; 7 May 1911 – 27 April 1973) was a British journalist, political activist, and film critic. A devout Stalinist, she became a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and she worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she served as a war correspondent for the Daily Express and as an alleged press agent for Joseph Stalin's Comintern. Throughout her lifetime, Ross wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for various organisations such as the British Workers' Film and Photo League. During a youthful sojourn in the Weimar Republic, Ross worked as a nightclub singer in Berlin's lesbian bars and second-rate cabarets while aspiring to become a famous actress. In 1931, she shared lodgings with writer Christopher Isherwood until her eviction due to her sexual activities. Her escapades inspired the heroine and plot of Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles, collected in Goodbye to...

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