Constance Worth | WatchedThis
Constance Worth
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 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. 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 and paid for her to tour Australia as their rising star. 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." 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...." 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, she signed a contract with RKO Pictures, taking the leading female roles as Constance Worth, in China Passage and Windjammer. 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. 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.
Filmography Movies
Acting
The House in the Forest
Elder brother, Adam Andinnian, is secretly married to Rose Turner. To defend her from a man who is stalking her and making lecherous advances, Adam shoots him and is sentenced to life in prison in a penal colony. Adam's mother, who favors him, conspires to help him escape the penal colony. The escape is a failure, resulting in a violent shootout where Adam, a prison guard, and another prisoner all perish. One body is never recovered, but the men are presumed dead. Younger brother, Karl, is engaged to Lucy Cleeves, but her snobbish parents deem him unsuitable. The narrative follows the interweaving lives and the long-term consequences of Adam's imprisonment and the failed escape attempt.
Love in the Welsh Hills
A farmer frames a petty officer for theft and confesses after falling over a cliff.
Deadline at Dawn
A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.
Dillinger
The life of American public enemy number one who was shot by the police in 1934.
Angels Over Broadway
Small-time businessman Charles Engle is threatened with exposure for embezzling $3,000 for his free-spending wife. Deciding on suicide, he scribbles a note, stuffs it in his pocket and goes for one last night on the town. He is pulled into a poker game by conman Bill O'Brien and singer Nina Barone, but when they discover the dropped note, they resolve to turn the tables, get Engle his $3,000 and save his life.
The Set-Up
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
Meet Boston Blackie
When a murder occurs on an ocean liner docked in New York, the trail leads to Coney Island and a spy ring.
The Dawn Express
A Nazi spy ring is after a chemical formula that increases the power of ordinary gasoline for U.S. Army aviation use. Two U.S. chemical companies are developing the formula, with each working on half for security purposes. The spies get half the formula and know that either of two chemists, Robert Norton or Tom Fielding, knows the rest. They capture Fielding, through a ruse by gang member Linda Pavlo, and threaten the life of his sister Nancy and his mother if he does not give them the formula. To protect his friend Fielding, who does know the formula and is engaged to Nancy, Tom pretends to know the secret and boards the Dawn Express plane with the spy leader and his gang.
Mystery of the White Room
A doctor and nurse solve an operating-room murder.
China Passage
Americans Tommy Baldwin and Joe Dugan are hired to transport a fabulous diamond from Shanghai to San Francisco. They will be paid handsomely on success or killed on failure. The diamond is stolen as they take possession of it.
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