Constance Worth
Constance Worth (19 August 1912 – 18 October 1963) was an Australian actress who became a Hollywood star in the late 1930s.
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[edit] Early life and career
She was born Jocelyn Howarth in Sydney, youngest daughter of banker Moffatt Howarth. She was also known in Australia as “Joy.”[1][2] She attended Ascham School Sydney before developing a career on stage in Australia and New Zealand with J. C. Williamson Ltd.[3][4]
[edit] Film career in Australia
As Jocelyn Howarth, she experienced success in Ken Hall’s films The Squatter's Daughter (1933) and The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934). Cinesound paid for her to tour Australia as their rising star.[5] Ken Hall claimed Howarth’s first screen test showed “light and shade, good diction, no accent and (that) she undoubtedly could act with no sign of the self-consciousness which almost always characterised the amateur.”[6] In late 1933, Smith's Weekly raved enthusiastically about the young actress; "Young Joy Howarth who leapt into publicity when she became the Squatter's Daughter a few months ago, is just the big hit nowadays....”[6]
[edit] Move to Hollywood
In April 1936 she sailed for the United States and Hollywood. After six months of unsuccessful effort, including a near fatal incident with a gas stove in her flat [7] she signed a contract with RKO, taking the leading female roles as Constance Worth, in China Passage and Windjammer.[8] The change of name was related to her first role with established Hollywood actor Vinton Hayworth. After Windjammer, RKO offered her no more films, and for the next twelve years she appeared in a mix of supporting and leading roles in a number of mostly B films. In mid 1939 she returned to act on stage in Australia, but went back to the US before the end of the year.[9][10] In 1941 she appeared in an uncredited minor role in Alfred Hitchock’s Suspicion, and in the same year, a leading role in the gangster B film Borrowed Hero. Her last film was a minor role in the 1949 Johnny Mack Brown western Western Renegades. Throughout her career and as late as 1961, publicity in Australia repeatedly suggested she was on the verge of signing a major studio contract.[11]
[edit] Personal life
In May 1937 she married US actor George Brent, but after only a few weeks they separated, and a divorce was granted the same year. The marriage and drama of the divorce attracted enormous newspaper publicity in Australia.[12] Denis O’Brien comments that even in 1939 “the Weekly was still dredging the Howarth saga” in its report on her latest film Mystery of the White Room (1939).[13]
In January 1946 she was again in newspapers, cited in divorce proceedings by the wife of Hollywood scriptwriter W. A. Pierce. Both denied any impropriety, but within a year of his divorce they married.[14]
In 1947 Australian newspapers reported that she had been severely injured in a car accident and had undergone plastic surgery.[15] Constance Worth died, aged 51, in Hollywood on 18 October 1963, an “ordinary housewife”, reportedly from anemia. Ken Hall remarked "unhappy circumstances" surrounded her death.[16]
She is occasionally mistaken for a British silent era film actress of the same name, active 1919–1922.[17]
[edit] Select Filmography
- The Squatter's Daughter (1933)
- The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934)
- China Passage (1937)
- Windjammer (1937)
- Meet Boston Blackie (1941)
- Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood (1942)
- G-Men vs the Black Dragon (1943)
- Klondike Kate (1943)
- Dilinger (1945)
- The Kid Sister (1945)
[edit] References
- ^ Internet Movie Database
- ^ US immigration records on her re-entry to the US on 13 October 1939, suggest her actual birth name was Enid Joyce and year of birth 1911
- ^ The Argus 23 August 1934
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June 1934
- ^ See for example Sydney Morning Herald 7 December 1933
- ^ a b Amber Sloan (1998) "Jocelyn Howarth" BONZA National Cinema and Television Database, RMIT University
- ^ The Mail,14 August 1937
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald 31 October 1936
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July, 1939
- ^ Joy Howarth arriving home on the SS Monterey, July, 1939. State Library of New South Wales image
- ^ See for example; Australian Women's Weekly, 11 December 1937, p.26; 13 December 1942, p.11; Sydney Morning Herald 8 October 1952, P. 5; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 November 1961, P.27
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald 21 May 1937
- ^ Denis O’Brien (1982) The Weekly. p.69. Penguin Books Australia. ISBN 0-14-006566-0
- ^ The Argus 11 January 1946
- ^ Sydney Morning Herald, 7 August 1947
- ^ Amber Sloan (1998) "Jocelyn Howarth death" BONZA National Cinema and Television Database, RMIT University
- ^ see http://www.answers.com/topic/constance-worth for example
