The 'it' girl usually personifies everything desirable in the ultimate woman.
Clara Bow, the silent movie actress, was the first 'it' girl and, since the advent of talking pictures more than seven decades ago, many potential candidates have emerged. My own choice is Marlene Dietrich. She overflowed with 'it' girl ingredients.
Truly enigmatic, Dietrich defied attempts by writers as great as Cocteau and Hemingway to put their fingers on what precisely made her tick, such was her elusiveness.
Born in Berlin, the precise date a closely guarded secret, she came to international prominence in the 1930 film The Blue Angel, in which she sang two of her most famous songs: Falling In Love Again and Lola.
Many films later, she took a one-woman show around the world. All tickets for her Brighton concert in the early sixties were sold in hours.
People lucky enough to see the show will never forget her indefinable magic, dispensed in quantities most copious. In a word, Marlene Dietrich was the embodiment of the 'it' factor.
-Michael Parker, Brighton
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