[Ads-l] "prostitute/whore with a heart of gold"

[victor steinbok]

I'll, sort of, match Garson's 1934. Not quite a hooker, but better

"Why?" "Why?" I was a good deal moved. "Well, wouldn't you say 'Tchah!' if your
late man was going about the place telling people you were mentally
negligible. .
. ." "But with a heart of gold." "Never mind the heart of gold. The
point is that my man,
my late man, a fellow I have always looked on more as some sort of an uncle
than a personal attendant, is shooting to and fro bellowing out at the
top of his
voice."

Wodehouse. Thank You, Jeeves! 1934

Might be a vector for critics picking up the phrase and matching it
with "prostitute" or something else.

A more recent vector is Pretty Woman, which had unleashed a torrent of
"hooker with a heart of gold" reviews. "Hooker" is far less frequent
in earlier sources. Another is Miss Saigon. Neither holds a candle to
Bret Harte's The Outcasts of Poker Flats (Mother Shipton) when it
comes to the trope, but the phrasing did not appear until later.

As for just plain unvarnished "Heart of Gold", there's a 1854
eponymous play by Douglas Jerrold.

http://goo.gl/kbk0j9

VS-)

On 4/26/15, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Below is a 1934 (probably) citation for a whore / prostitute with a
> heart-of-gold.
>
> Year: 1934
> Book: Halcyon Days in Africa
> Author: Wilfred Saint-Mande
> Quote Page 326
> Database: Google Books snippet view; data may be inaccurate; Worldcat
> agrees with year
> https://books.google.com/books?id=iUFAAAAAIAAJ
>
> [Begin extracted text]
> Whores every goddam one. I lived with a prostitute for a year. That
> woman had a heart of gold. When I was down and out she took me in,
> looked after me and nursed me back to health. How many so-called
> respectable women are fit to clean ...
> [End extracted text]

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