The Girl From Ipanema Is A Real Person

The real girl from Ipanema - she is about 65 now. Brazil has excellent plastic surgeons.

Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, each one she passes goes - ah
When she walks, she's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
That when she passes, each one she passes goes - ooh
(Ooh) But I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her
Yes I would give my heart gladly
But each day, when she walks to the sea
She looks straight ahead, not at me
Tall, (and) tan, (and) young, (and) lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes, I smile - but she doesn't see (doesn't see)
(She just doesn't see, she never sees me...)

The song made millions of dollars - but Pinto made nothing from it. She later opened a dress shop - the song writer's heirs sued her for using "Girl from Ipanema" as the name. She won in court.

The song was inspired by Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, a fifteen-year-old girl living on Montenegro Street in the fashionable Ipanema district in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Daily, she would stroll past the popular Veloso bar-café, not just to the beach, but in the everyday course of her life. She would sometimes enter the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave to the sound of wolf-whistles. In the winter of 1962, the composers watched the girl pass by the bar, and it is easy to imagine why they noticed her—Helô was a five-foot eight-inch brunette, and she attracted the attention of many of the bar patrons. Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity. The song received a Grammy Award as record of the year in 1965. From wikipedia.