She Was Poor But She Was Honest
Betty Compson shines in this woman's story of a prim British Lord who rescues a poor woman from the cops, and hires her to save his son, who has drifted away from a career in architecture and into the arms of a scheming gold-digger with a violent Lithuanian pimp. Complications ensue. The "Britishness" of the setting is a bit off, as some of the actors fail to achieve the proper accents, but the rooms in the home of the landed gentry are magnificently over-the-top, as are the apartments of the wealthy, and the glimpse inside a fancy couture shop. These sets present a smashingly florid mash-up of English Manor, Frenchified beaux-arts, and geometric art deco that would fall out of favour shortly, but was the height of luxury at the time.
This film flirts with ideas it never names, and although Compson flings herself between virtuous and tough-as-nails, the actual defining moment comes when diminutive Daphne Pollard, as a landlady, bursts into song while scrubbing the floors. The song she sings in her warbling Australian-Cockney voice is the chorus to "She Was Poor But She Was Honest," a British musical hall favourite that may have begun life as a genuinely tragic Victorian lament, but which by World War I had become a burlesque filled with outrageous verses declaimed with mock portentousness.
It's the same the whole world over It's the poor what gets the blame It's the rich what get the pleasure Ain't it all a blooming shame?
Look up Elsa Lanchester's version on You Tube and listen closely to the lyrics.
There are countless verses, but these two, which appear in many versions, form an actual gloss on the plot:
She was poor but she was honest, Victim of the squire's whim; First 'e loved 'er, then 'e left 'er And she lost 'er name through 'im.
Then she ran away to London For to 'ide 'er grief and shame; But she met another squire And she lost 'er name again.
I wonder if Daphne Pollard improvised the singing of that song or if it was really in the script. Either way, it certainly fits.
This film flirts with ideas it never names, and although Compson flings herself between virtuous and tough-as-nails, the actual defining moment comes when diminutive Daphne Pollard, as a landlady, bursts into song while scrubbing the floors. The song she sings in her warbling Australian-Cockney voice is the chorus to "She Was Poor But She Was Honest," a British musical hall favourite that may have begun life as a genuinely tragic Victorian lament, but which by World War I had become a burlesque filled with outrageous verses declaimed with mock portentousness.
It's the same the whole world over It's the poor what gets the blame It's the rich what get the pleasure Ain't it all a blooming shame?
Look up Elsa Lanchester's version on You Tube and listen closely to the lyrics.
There are countless verses, but these two, which appear in many versions, form an actual gloss on the plot:
She was poor but she was honest, Victim of the squire's whim; First 'e loved 'er, then 'e left 'er And she lost 'er name through 'im.
Then she ran away to London For to 'ide 'er grief and shame; But she met another squire And she lost 'er name again.
I wonder if Daphne Pollard improvised the singing of that song or if it was really in the script. Either way, it certainly fits.
- CatherineYronwode
- 20. Nov. 2022