Mistress Pamela
1973 film by Jim O'Connolly
Mistress Pamela is a 1973 British sex comedy drama film directed by Jim O'Connolly and starring Ann Michelle, Dudley Foster, Anna Quayle and Anthony Sharp. It was written by O'Connolly loosely based on the 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson.
Plot
In the eighteenth century, Pamela, a servant girl in the household of Lord Devenish, must fight off the advances of her young master, a gentleman determined to have Pamela as his mistress.
Cast
Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A fate worse than oblivion overtakes poor Pamela at last, and she loses her crusty literary virtue to this shabby article. In fact, she seems to have been made over with very little difficulty to the kind of fare that is calculated to raise a basic British guffaw or two: Lord Robert Devenish prowls through the unlavish period trappings of someone's stately home, occasionally rising in his peevish frustration to such witticisms as "Gad, I wish I were queer!"; Pamela Andrews eventually melts quite willingly at her master's suggestions of bed, while still fiercely holding out for a solid gold ring; and the protective Mrs. Jelks fair throbs with latent lesbian passion. Which is cruel enough; but a double indignity has been visited on Richardson: what the makers clearly had in mind was Carry On Tom Jones."
The Boston Globe wrote: "Producer-director-screenwriter Jim O'Connolly has promoted his movie (in its American premiere here) as another Tom Jones. It's not – in part because the material itself is more confined than Fielding's sprawling tapestry of country life, in part because O'Connolly's treatment is unambitious. He has ground out a straightforward 90-minute narrative, decorated at the dull spots with melodramatic score, straight-into-the-camera asides, and partial blackout of the concupiscence over which he scrawls, "We're being censored!!" He seems willing to sacrifice both stylistic consistency and substance for a momentary laugh."
Boxoffice wrote: "'The two principals, along with Anna Quayle, as the housekeeper romantically attached to the young girl herself, make of the adaptation of the Samuel Richardson classic novel a joy to behold, and something that will remind the more discerning American moviegoer of the calibre of Tom Jones."
Time Out wrote, "Richardson's 18th century classic Pamela clearly dredged up for its bawdy possibilities ...
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mistress Pamela” is 1973 film by Jim O'Connolly. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mistress, Pamela and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6880459. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973 and 1740.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mistress Pamela” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.