Doing a search on Tom Jobim, I found the address of his fan club:
http://www.jobim.com.br

from there, I was able to collect a few more infos about the original "Girl from Ipanema": looks like she was a real beauty and even starred on the brazilian edition of Playboy in 1987; this year she did pose again on the same magazine, but with her 24 yo daughter.
You can see a picture of her at the top of her beauty here:
http://old.clarin.com/diario/2003/01/20/s-03301.htm

and also have an idea of how she looks at 56 here:
http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2003/abril/10/revista/revista-20030410-09.html

Comments are welcome.

Donny, maybe you can help me to post the pics here; here are the links:

http://old.clarin.com/diario/2003/01/20/t033dh01.jpg
http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2003/abril/10/revista/revista-20030410-09.jpg

[This message has been edited by Dreamer (edited 06-23-2003).]

Andrea, at 56 she's still got it. I think she aged another year though while I was waiting for the picture to come up.
Terry

------------------
jam on,
Terry http://imjazzed.homestead.com/Index.html

[This message has been edited by Dnj (edited 06-23-2003).]

Hello Andrea,

nice information !!!!
Here is also a link for a great jobimsite.
you can download original music arranged by his son paulo and others. Also photo's from jobim when he was in the beginning of his music composing, etc.... http://www2.uol.com.br/tomjobim/index_flash.htm

[This message has been edited by notlos (edited 06-23-2003).]

Hi Andrea,
This lady would be welcome in front of my camera anytime.
Frank

Interesting couple of articles. Luckily they were in Spanish - I thought they would have been in Portugese.

Bryan

Nice times but I like the new fashion (2003) of brasilian girls...

Chico

O.K. Chico, are you going to post some pics of the "new fashion brasillian girls"?????? i bet that I would like them too!
Bill

Hi friends,
I am glad that I am now able to understand quite a bit of portuguese, because the lyrics of most brazilian songs are as interesting and meaningful as the music itself. From this point of view, it looks like the whole concept behind a song like "The girl from Ipanema" is the power of beauty and harmony, that can arouse a feeling like love in human beings. Here are the final lyrics, with a rather free english translation (done by me):

"Ah, se ela soubesse
Que quando ela passa
O mundo sorrindo se enche de graça
E fica mais lindo
Por causa do amor"

"Oh, if she only could know
That when she walks by
The world smiles full of grace
And becomes a more beautiful place
Thanks to the power of love"

The name of the girl was Heloisa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto but, after her wedding with a rich engineer named Fernando Abel Mendes Pinheiro, she was known simply as Hele Pinheiro. The first time Tom Jobim saw her walking and swaying on her way to the Ipanema beach she was only 15 and is described like a blossoming adolescent of stunning beauty, yet very unsecure about herself and her looks. When she got married Tom Jobim and his first wife Thereza witnessed the wedding. During the seventies and the eighties she was a protagonist of the social life in Rio and now, at 56, she stars for the second time on "Playboy", together with her daughter ("I did it to help her overcome her shyness", she said).
Of course one can only think with a hint of sadness how easily symbols fade away and lose their original power.