Constance Worth

Constance Worth
Constance Worth in The Wages of Sin (1938)
Born Enid Joyce Howarth
(1911-08-19)19 August 1911
Sydney, Australia
Died 18 October 1963(1963-10-18) (aged 52)
Los Angeles County, California, U.S.
Alma mater St. Gabriel's School
Ascham School
Years active 1933–1949
Spouse(s)
George Brent
(m. 1937; div. 1937)

William A. Pierce
(m. 1946)

Constance Worth (also known as Jocelyn Howarth) (19 August 1911 – 18 October 1963) was an Australian actress who became a Hollywood star in the late 1930s.

Early life and career

She was born Enid Joyce “Joy” Howarth on 19 August 1911 in Sydney, Australia, youngest of three daughters of businessman Moffatt Howarth and his wife Mary Ellen (née Dumbrell).[1][2][3][4] She attended Ascham School and a finishing school before developing a career on stage as Jocelyn Howarth, in Australia and New Zealand with J. C. Williamson Ltd.[5][6][7]

Film career in Australia

Jocelyn Howarth and Nancy Bird Walton, ca. 1932 – by unknown photographer.

As Jocelyn Howarth, she experienced success in Ken Hall's films The Squatter's Daughter (1933) and The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934). Cinesound put her under an 18-month contract[8] and paid for her to tour Australia as their rising star.[9]

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."[10] 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...."[10]

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,[11] she signed a contract with RKO Pictures, taking the leading female roles as Constance Worth, in China Passage and Windjammer.[12] The change of name was related to her first role with established Hollywood actor Vinton Hayworth. After Windjammer, RKO offered her no more films. Her next role was in Willis Kent's 1938 exploitation quickie, The Wages of Sin, playing a young woman lured into prostitution. For the next 12 years, she appeared in a mix of leading, supporting, and uncredited roles in B films. In mid-1939, she returned to act on stage in Australia, but went back to the U.S. before the end of the year.[13][14] In 1941, she appeared in an uncredited minor role in Alfred Hitchcock'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 again. This did not happen.[15]

Personal life

In May 1937, she married Irish 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.[16] 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).[17]

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.[18]

In 1947, Australian newspapers reported that she had been severely injured in a car accident and had undergone plastic surgery.[19] Constance Worth died, aged 52, in Hollywood on 18 October 1963, an "ordinary housewife", reportedly from anemia. Ken Hall remarked that "unhappy circumstances" surrounded her death.[20]

She is occasionally mistaken for a British silent-era stage and film actress of the same name, active 1919–1922.

Partial filmography

References

  1. ↑ The Sydney Morning Herald 26 August 1911, p. 14
  2. ↑ The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 22 September 1921, p. 6
  3. ↑ U.S. immigration records on her re-entry to the US on 13 October 1939, confirm her birth name as Enid Joyce and her year of birth 1911
  4. ↑ Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld), Wednesday 15 November 1933, page 8
  5. ↑ The Argus 23 August 1934
  6. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 27 June 1934
  7. ↑ Terry Ramsaye (Ed) (1948) 1948–1948 International Film Almanac. p. 416. Quigley Publications, California, USA
  8. ↑ "WHO ARE OUR POTENTIAL STARS?". Table Talk. Melbourne. 31 August 1933. p. 17. Retrieved 16 March 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. ↑ See for example Sydney Morning Herald 7 December 1933
  10. 1 2 Amber Sloan (1998) "Jocelyn Howarth" BONZA National Cinema and Television Database, RMIT University Archived 10 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
  11. ↑ The Mail, 14 August 1937
  12. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 31 October 1936
  13. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 1 July, 1939
  14. ↑ Joy Howarth arriving home on the SS Monterey, July, 1939. State Library of New South Wales image
  15. ↑ 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
  16. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 21 May 1937
  17. ↑ Denis O’Brien (1982) The Weekly. p. 69. Penguin Books Australia. ISBN 0-14-006566-0
  18. ↑ The Argus 11 January 1946
  19. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald, 7 August 1947
  20. ↑ Amber Sloan (1998) "Jocelyn Howarth death" BONZA National Cinema and Television Database, RMIT University Archived 10 April 2011 at the Wayback Machine.
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