Trivia

After the brief foray into film, she became well-known as a writer, political activist, and film critic.

Ross is credited by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and other sources as the muse for lyricist Eric Maschwitz's jazz standard "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)," one of the twentieth century's most enduring love songs.

Mother of mystery writer Sarah Caudwell.

Contrary to popular misconception, Ross and Claud Cockburn never legally married as Cockburn was uncertain whether his divorce from his American first wife Hope Hale Davis was valid in England. Whether Ross knew that Cockburn was still legally married to Davis is unknown. However, several months before her daughter's birth, Ross filed a deed poll in which she changed her surname to Cockburn.

Although often listed as the step-grandmother of actress-director Olivia Wilde as well as the step-mother of Andrew Cockburn, Alexander Cockburn, and Patrick Cockburn, these relationship claims are technically incorrect. Ross never married Claud Cockburn as Cockburn was uncertain whether his divorce from Hope Davis was valid in England.

As a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, Ross was friends with Ernest Hemingway. Ross' companion for six months in Spain was 25-year-old cub reporter Richard Mowrer, the step-son of Hemingway's first wife Elizabeth Hadley Richardson. Richard's father was Paul Mowrer, the first journalist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence in 1929.

One of Ross' partners was poet John Cornford, the great-grandson of Charles Darwin. During the first year of the Spanish Civil War, he was a member of the POUM militia and later the International Brigades. He died fighting against the Nationalists, at Lopera, near Córdoba.

Yet another of Ross' romantic partners was John Blomshield upon whom the film character of Baron Maximilian von Heune was based on for Cabaret (1972). Blomshield was a wealthy bisexual playboy and artist who was friends with Ernest Hemingway. He appears under the pseudonym of "Clive" in Christopher Isherwood's "The Berlin Stories". Isherwood claimed that Blomshield had sexually pursued both Isherwood and Jean Ross during their sojourn in Weimar-era Berlin, and he convinced them to accompany him on a trip abroad. When the time came for the trio to leave, Blomshield abruptly disappeared from Germany without saying goodbye.

When the 19-year-old musician and actor Peter van Eyck met Ross, he often moonlighted as a jazz pianist in Berlin cabarets. Either during their brief relationship or soon after their separation, Ross realised she was pregnant. As a personal favour to Ross, gay writer Christopher Isherwood pretended to be her heterosexual impregnator to facilitate an abortion procedure. Ross nearly died as a result of the abortion procedure due to the carelessness of the doctor. Following the procedure, Isherwood visited an ailing Ross in a Berlin hospital. Wrongly assuming the shy gay author to be her heterosexual partner, the hospital staff despised him for callously forcing Ross to undergo a near-fatal abortion. These tragicomic events later inspired Isherwood to write his 1937 novella Sally Bowles and serves as its narrative climax.

As well as inspiring Sally Bowles, Ross has been credited as the inspiration for one of the 20th century's most-enduring popular songs, "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)". Although its composer Eric Maschwitz's wife Hermione Gingold said her autobiography the song was written for either herself or actor Anna May Wong, Maschwitz's own autobiography contradicts that of Gingold. Maschwitz cites "fleeting memories of [a] young love" as the inspiration for the song, and most sources-including the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography-say cabaret singer Ross, with whom Maschwitz had a youthful romantic liaison, was the muse for the song.