The Face upon the Barroom Floor

"The Face upon the Barroom Floor", aka "The Face on the Floor" and "The Face on the Barroom Floor", is a poem originally written by the poet John Henry Titus in 1872. A later version was adapted from the Titus poem by Hugh Antoine d'Arcy in 1887 and first published in the New York Dispatch.

According to d'Arcy, the poem was inspired by an actual happening at Joe Smith's saloon at Fourth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan. When it was reprinted in a d'Arcy collection, he wrote a preface explaining the confusion of the two titles:

My only excuse for offering this little book is the fact that my friends want to get a few stories out of my scrap book—so here they are. One popular mistake I desire to rectify. When I wrote "The Face Upon the Floor," which was in 1887, I had no idea that it would receive the favor which it has. The popularity of the story induced the publisher of a Bowery Song Sheet to issue a song which was a bad plagiarism and, to get away from my copyright, called it "The Face on the Barroom Floor." Strange to say, the public has accepted the latter title, which is not correct. This book contains the true and original story. D'Arcy.

Written in ballad form, the poem tells of an artist ruined by love; having lost his beloved Madeline to another man, he has turned to drink. Entering a bar, the artist tells his story to the bartender and to the assembled crowd. He then offers to sketch Madeline's face on the floor of the bar but falls dead in the middle of his work. Here is the full text:

Keystone Studios used the poem as the basis for a 1914 film of the same name starring Charles Chaplin.

In the 1941 movie Louisiana Purchase, Bob Hope conducts a Senate filibuster which ends with his reading the entire poem while drawing a picture on the floor.

In Mad #10 (April 1954), the poem was illustrated by Jack Davis and Basil Wolverton, the latter doing a face that is kin to his "Lena the Hyena" .

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Wikipedia