The sad last picture of Sabrina, the British answer to Marilyn Monroe - who died a drug-addicted recluse in her squalid home, crippled by back surgery to cure the pain of the breasts which made her famous

This is the sad last picture of Sabrina, the women who became famous as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe - but who, DailyMail.com can reveal - died in agony from botched back surgery to cure pain caused by the breasts which brought her fame.
Photographed just a month before her death with the 'Shirley Temple ringlets' she asked her carer to arrange, it was a last moment of glamour before she died with him holding her hand in a Hollywood hospital, an end to painful, drug-addicted and guilt-wracked fall from fame.
Sabrina, real name Norma Ann Sykes, achieved renown in the 1950s; famous first in Britain and then in America for her 41 inch chest and 18-inch waist.
Now DailyMail.com can tell for the first time the full tragedy of the woman who was called Britain's Marilyn Monroe - and the Kim Kardashian and Jordan of her day but who died in such oscurity that it took almost a year for her death to emerge.
At the height of her fame she boasted of 1,000 fan letters a day and insured her breasts at Lloyds of London for £100,000 - a figure probably close to £2.2 million or $2.9 million in current values.
But she died a virtual recluse, in a squalid North Hollywood house wrecked by years of neglect, cared for by a formerly homeless man who claimed to love her.
He now squats in it, growing pot plants and leaving her bedroom a shrine which he refuses to let anyone see.
Sabrina's decline was caused by the most ironic of twists: the breasts which had her famous left her plagued with back pain and a botched surgery to attempt to cure the pain left her unable to walk.
She became addicted to pain medication and died of respiratory failure last November, aged 80, but her death only emerged this week.
It was a long, and slow, decline fro m fame.
The spotlight had been fading throughout the 1960s, and by the mid-1960s, Sabrina was appearing in touring shows in the mid-west. 
Gossip column items claiming Vanessa Redgrave had started a feud with her  
But she found love and in 1967 married a wealthy Hollywood gynecologist in November 1967, Dr Harry Melsheimer.
Melsheimer was 11 years her senior, a German immigrant who given his age appears certain to have been somehow caught up in World War II, and a divorced father. 
He owned several sports cars, a 40ft yacht and a mansion in Encino, California.
Public records show that the marriage ended in divorce in 1974 - not 1977 as had been widely reported - but in fact, DailyMail.com learned, it was even more briefly lived than that.
Judy Stoller, a 78-year-old friend and neighbor, said: 'She hardly mentioned her husband. She just told me she blew it because she should have divorced him so she could get some financial gain. 
'She never did. He did divorce her in time. As time went by she found out she was divorced, she didn't sign papers or anything.'
From there, things went from bad to worse.
Separated from her husband, she moved into to where her mother was already living: a  scruffy single-story building near the freeway in North Hollywood which was to be home for the rest of her life.
She was still young and glamorous - enough to appear on This Is Your Life in the UK in 1977 but she was plagued by chronic back problems from her large breasts, and in 1988 she decided to have a back operation at Dayton General Hospital.
The surgeon was negligent and botched the operation, leaving Sykes wheelchair-bound.
She successfully sued him for $190,000, but soon required full-time care at the North Hollywood house and became a recluse with her elderly mother, Annie, looking after her.
Her friends said the house was in a poor state and lacked air conditioning, and her mother's room on the west side of the building would become baking hot under the California sun.
Sykes told her friends that one night in 1995, she ignored her mother's cries for help. When she checked on her in the morning, Annie had died of heat exhaustion.
'Sabrina carried this bitter pill with her, she knew she was to blame for that,' said her neighbor, Stoller.
'Did she think she was going to cause her mother to die? No. But she did, and she knew she did.
'She'd say to me, 'When I think of what I did to my mother, I can't stand it.''
Stoller was one of the few to know the full story of the fallen star in the suburban street.
'When I first met her she had this really long hair,' she told DailyMail.com.
'I thought it was a wig at first she had so much hair. And her skin was luminous and wrinkle-free. It was from living a life indoors.
'There was nothing artificial about Sabrina, although she had this artificial look when she was young. 
'But she was completely genuine. It's wonderful to be around someone who is that genuine. She wore her heart on her sleeve, there was nothing held back.
'I was fond of Sabrina. I think she was special.
'Maybe a year before she died she showed me photographs of herself. I was stunned when I saw them, because that wasn't the Sabrina I knew. That woman was drop-dead, stunningly beautiful.
'She told me the story. Her mother had pushed her forward to be in the movies. And it worked, because she was a one-of-a-kind beautiful woman. 
'She had that Marilyn Monroe thing. She had a sweet voice and a woman's body.
'But she said something to me one time, which I thought was the most endearing thing she ever said to me. She said "You know Judy, I didn't want to be in the movies because I didn't have any talent."'

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