"A 1965 black-and-white starring
Carroll Baker as an intellectual prostitute with a heart of gold. A daughter of the slums, she pulls herself up by her library card, doing whatever she has to do but reading the whole while--even in the brothel parlor as she waits for her next john. When her friend is run over and needs a lifesaving operation, Sylvia risks the ultimate degradation to pay the medical bills. Emerging triumphant and self-contained as ever, she and the friend escape the life and Sylvia becomes a respected poet. This movie is unsurpassed as a statement of female autonomy and sisterhood but there's not a word in the feminist critiques about it."
From: Florence King, Stet, Dammit! The Misanthrope's Corner 1991 to 2002, NY, 2003, pp. 256, 257.
