The first time that I had ever heard of the name Sabrina was through "Sabrina The Teenage Witch", a spinoff from those "Archie" cartoons in the early 1970s. I gather that she was the "Archie" equivalent of Samantha Stevens from "Bewitched" which was still running in prime time.
It would be years later when I was getting into the films of old Hollywood that I finally got to see Audrey Hepburn's original "Sabrina" (1954). I think that I'll always prefer the earlier "Roman Holiday" over "Sabrina" but there's no denying that Audrey was still amazing to watch.
As much as people were going gaga over Audrey's Sabrina wearing that black cocktail dress, I think that for the Japanese who saw the movie under the title "Uruwashi no Sabrina"（麗しのサブリナ...Beautiful Sabrina）, it was the rather form-fitting black outfit that she wore at 11:33 above that got their attention. When I was living in Japan, I often heard about those Sabrina Pants as they were called back then, although I don't know if the outfit had an official name in the United States. My impression is that young women were trying to get their hands on their own version of the outfit.
All this talk about Sabrina is due to the fact that I had wanted to profile "Sabrina", singer-songwriter Leo Ieiri's（家入レオ）debut single from February 2012. Last year, I wrote about her "Sora to Ao"（空と青）after catching her on an episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）, and I did want to do a follow-up.
Interestingly enough, Ieiri had gotten the title for her first single directly from the 1954 movie "Sabrina" after seeing it as a child (according to a 2012 Barks interview with the singer via J-Wiki). Ieiri wrote the lyrics while she and Yoshihiko Nishio（西尾芳彦）came up with the rock melody. The whole idea behind "Sabrina" was based on the singer's own fears during junior high about how she would be accepted in class, and so she tended to close herself off from others...something that she imbued into the song's protagonist of Sabrina. Sabrina would then express herself in some very bold ways including some very bright red lipstick, just to gain any sort of attention including perhaps love to relieve her loneliness.
"Sabrina" was used as the third ending theme for the anime adaptation of the manga "Toriko"（トリコ）which ran between 2011 and 2014. The single would break into the Top 10 of Oricon by placing in at No. 9, going Platinum. It was also on her Ieiri's debut album "LEO" which was released in October 2012 and hit No. 2 on the album charts, going Gold. The album would ultimately finish at No. 98 in the yearly charts for that year.
Hello, Brian. Good to hear from you. Hope you have been doing well. I never saw "Gone With The Wind" because I don't do particularly well with films that long. However, from what I have heard about the classic is that she managed to survive a lot of consternation throughout the movie, although she also seems to come under the label of sociopath.
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