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

[Jonathan Lighter]

OED has "with a heart of gold" only from the 19th c., though "heart of
gold," n., as "a noble-hearted person" goes all the way back to the 16th.

But what of the cliche' "a whore with a heart of gold"?  It seemed to me
that it is chiefly a drama critic's phrase.  GB supports this view. All the
exx. appear to describe fictional characters. (Well, duh!).

1941 _Commonweal_  (Oct. 24?) [GB]: The debonair bootlegger and the pretty
singer; the heart-of-gold streetwalker and the tap dancer; the hat-check
girl and the torpedo; the sentimental proprietor and his gunman pal.

1947 _Life_ (Feb. 10) 56: In a series of some 23 productions she was never
once ... the prostitute with a heart of gold...nor any of a great many
other admirable and familiar figures.

1958 _Commonweal_ [GB snippet: original not seen]: Marina Vlady [is] the
heart-of-gold prostitute who convinces the student of the evil of his crime.

1960 Leslie Fiedler _Love and Death in the American Novel_ 279: [Crane and
Dreiser] replaced the Good Good Girl with the Good Bad one - the sanctified
virgin with the hoyden or the whore with a heart of gold.

1962 Joseph Hayes _Don't Go Away Mad_ (N.Y.: Random House) 38" Let's see -
perversion, miscegenation, the whore with a heart of gold, the horrors of
marriage and the mockery of all love betrween two people of the opposite
sex - did he leave anything out [of the play]?

1965 _Films in Review_ [GB snippet: original not seen]: Kim Novak seems
well cast as the dim-witted whore (with a heart of gold).

1971 _Life_  (July 30) 14: She is not a hooker with a heart of gold.

Etc.

Fiedler refers to Crane's Maggie and Dreiser's Carrie as the types.

Nowadays prostitutes seem to be the people most likely to be credited with
hearts of gold.

Go figure.

JL
-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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