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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

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]

Below is a citation for the variant phrase "golden-hearted prostitute".

Year: 1936
Periodical: The London Mercury
Volume 34
Quote Page 444
Database: Google Books snippet; data may be inaccurate; text is not
visible in snippet; probe for 1936 reveals a snippet of July 1936
issue; circa 1936 probably correct
https://books.google.com/books?id=lgcbAQAAMAAJ

[Begin extracted text]
... adapted from Captain J. L. Hardy's novel about a war-time escape
from a German prison camp, is in a rather too familiar vein of
sentimental melodrama -- the escaping officer is befriended by a
golden-hearted prostitute in Berlin -- but here the cinema comes much
nearer to doing its proper work than in any other of the films on my
list this month.
[End extracted text]


On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 5:45 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      "prostitute/whore with a heart of gold"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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