Deborah Thornton Jackson; the "Martini girl" (Strange)
Hyfler/Rosner
Telegraph 02/06/2007
Deborah Thornton Jackson, who has died aged 57, found
fame in 1971 as the Martini girl, promoting the earthly
delights of drinking Italian vermouth "anytime, any place,
anywhere" while lounging in a decidedly heavenly setting.
Modelling under the name Erica Wills, and alluringly
stretched out in a red swimsuit by a sun-drenched pool, tray
of iced drinks to hand, her feline image came to embody the
jet-setting aspirations of the age; in Europe, the campaign
was said to have boosted Martini sales threefold and stamped
the brand with the same cool, sexually-charged elegance that
defined James Bond's cocktail of choice.
Yet within a year she had abandoned her career as a
model and had turned up in Lebanon, then one of the world's
most dangerous troublespots, where she was forced to work as
a nightclub hostess before being rescued by one of the
wealthiest men in Beirut.
She was born Deborah Anne Wills on July 4 1949 at
Windsor, where her father was serving with the Blues and
Royals; her mother had been a Berlei lingerie model.
Educated at St Anne's College for Young Ladies at Lytham St
Annes, she trained as a stewardess with British European
Airways.
On Deborah's first flight in charge of first-class,
the Duchess of Devonshire complained to her about the
behaviour of two fellow-passengers, John Lennon and Yoko
Ono, who appeared to be engaged in sexual intercourse across
three adjoining seats. When Deborah tapped Lennon on the
shoulder, the ex-Beatle swore at her and the captain had to
be called. The flight was diverted to Rome, where the errant
couple were removed from the aircraft.
Claustrophobia soon put paid to her flying career, and
Deborah turned to modelling, a line of work that had been
suggested to her some years earlier; when she was 16, one of
the leading models of the 1960s, Jean Shrimpton, had spotted
her in a lift at Jenners, the Edinburgh department store,
and encouraged her. Deborah now enrolled at the London
Academy of Modelling, financing the course by working at the
Playboy Club as a bunny girl before joining the Michael
Whitaker Agency as a model and taking the professional name
Erica.
Lord Lichfield shot her picture portfolio, and within
a matter of months she had landed the Martini contract.
While her friendships with the likes of Tom Jones and
George Best regularly made the gossip columns, Deborah's
modelling career abruptly stalled in 1972 when she flew to
Beirut to help a girlfriend who had got into difficulties
and was being forced to dance at a bar there.
This errand of mercy went disastrously wrong from the
outset: Deborah was drugged, robbed of her passport and
forced to join her friend as a hostess at the bar,
effectively a prisoner in a place which turned out to be
little more than a brothel. Deliverance arrived only some
months later, when a wealthy businessman and playboy Elie
Ayache walked in and, smitten by a coup de foudre, purchased
her release for $5,000. She married him in 1975.
The following year, as Christians living in Muslim
west Beirut, Deborah and Ayache found themselves caught up
in the Lebanese civil war and had to make a dash for the
Green Line.
On his return their driver was shot dead by a sniper,
and most of Ayache's fleet of Ferraris was destroyed - he
owned the Middle East franchise for the marque - along with
a collection of Riva speedboats, all uninsured.
In September 1982 Deborah pitched in as a Red Cross
relief worker following the massacre by Lebanese militia of
hundreds of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps. With the first-aid skills she had learned as an air
stewardess she helped tend the wounded and dying, a
harrowing experience which she later recounted on a BBC
website.
One image in particular affected her deeply, that of a
small boy who had lost all his limbs. "I can remember just
holding him," she wrote, "holding his little body close. He
was covered with blood and the life was running out of him.
He was crying for his mother."
During the 1989 war Deborah and her family were forced
to live in a basement for six months; Hizbollah rebels
stormed their villa and repeatedly raped her before being
shot dead by government troops. Later, under Syrian
bombardment, she and her two daughters fled Lebanon on a
hydrofoil piloted by Dutch mercenaries and went to live near
her mother in Scotland.
Deborah Thornton Jackson, who died on May 18 following
a stroke, was married three times. Having divorced Elie
Ayache, who died in 2005, she married Robert Alexander, a
Scottish publican; after separating from him, in 2002 she
married Neil Jackson, now professor of architecture at
Liverpool University. He survives her with the two daughters
of her first marriage.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
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> Deborah Thornton Jackson
>
>
> Telegraph 02/06/2007
>
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>
>
>
> Deborah Thornton Jackson, who has died aged 57, found
> fame in 1971 as the Martini girl, promoting the earthly
> delights of drinking Italian vermouth "anytime, any place,
> anywhere" while lounging in a decidedly heavenly setting.
>
>
some photos: