Constance Worth

Acting

Constance Worth

Born 1912-08-19 · Sydney, Australia

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.

Acting credits

Suspicion poster
7.1

A sheltered heiress falls for a charming playboy and elopes with him, but soon discovers his gambling vice and mounting debts. As his lies deepen and those around them meet mysterious ends, she begins to suspect that her husband’s affection may conceal a deadly motive—and that she could be his next victim.

Suspicion

1941

Cover Girl poster
6.4

A nightclub dancer makes it big in modeling, leaving her dancer boyfriend behind.

Cover Girl

1944

The Set-Up poster
7.4

Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.

The Set-Up

1949

The Crime Doctor’s Strangest Case poster
5.2

The Crime Doctor gets involved in the case of the poisoning of a wealthy industrialist.

The Crime Doctor’s Strangest Case

1943

Deadline at Dawn poster
6.2

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.

Deadline at Dawn

1946

The Kid Sister poster
7.0

A madcap comedy about a kid sister who tries to steal her older sister's boyfriend. Her plan involves joining forces with a burglar to rob the unfortunate suitor's home.

The Kid Sister

1945

Crime Doctor poster
6.4

Robert is found beside the highway with a head injury and amnesia. His amnesia motivates him to become a Physician and the country's leading criminal psychologist.

Crime Doctor

1943

City Without Men poster
5.7

A young woman's husband has been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In order to be near him to try to help him get his sentence overturned, she moves into a boardinghouse near the prison whose residents are the wives of inmates.

City Without Men

1943

Frenchman's Creek poster
5.8

An English lady falls in love with a French pirate after he kidnaps her from her ancestral home on the coast of Cornwall and sweeps her off her feet into a world of adventure.

Frenchman's Creek

1944

Dillinger poster
5.9

The life of American public enemy number one who was shot by the police in 1934.

Dillinger

1945

Angels Over Broadway poster
5.9

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.

Angels Over Broadway

1940

Mystery of the White Room poster
9.0

A doctor and nurse solve an operating-room murder.

Mystery of the White Room

1939

Dangerous Blondes poster
6.3

Mystery writer Barry Craig (Allyn Joslyn) and his wife Jane (Evelyn Keyes), prefer solving crimes rather than writing about them. They get a chance when killings plague the fashion photography studio of Ralph McCormick (Edmund Lowe). After his secretary, Julie Taylor(Anita Louise) reports an attempt to murder her there, Erika McCormick's (Ann Savage) Aunt Isabel Fleming (Mary Forbes) is stabbed and the evidence points to Madge Lawrence (Bess Flowers) an older model and an apparent suicide. Police Inspector Joseph Clinton (Frank Craven) declares the case closed...but then Erika is murdered.

Dangerous Blondes

1943

The Wages of Sin poster
3.7

A hard-working woman trying to support her family and working at a menial, low-paying job falls for a low-life and before she knows it, he has her working as a prostitute in a bordello.

The Wages of Sin

1938

No artwork available
9.0

Rich cousins marry after they are both bankrupted.

The Education of Nicky

1921

That's Sexploitation! poster
5.9

Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema's gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It's the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn't a 'bad' thing - and that it could rake in some dough.

That's Sexploitation!

2013

Appointment in Berlin poster
7.1

The "war of nerves" which gripped the European continent in 1938, is the background for this war thriller starring George Sanders.

Appointment in Berlin

1943

China Passage poster
6.3

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.

China Passage

1937

No artwork available
NR

A farmer frames a petty officer for theft and confesses after falling over a cliff.

Love in the Welsh Hills

1921

Klondike Kate poster
5.5

A young man in Alaska finds himself accused of murder, and must fight to clear his name.

Klondike Kate

1943

She Has What It Takes poster
9.0

Fay Weston, a radio singer of no consequence, pretends to be the daughter of a recently deceased Broadway stage star in order to hoodwink Broadway play producer in starring her in a planned-show that is a tribute to her supposed mother.

She Has What It Takes

1943

Western Renegades poster
6.5

Brown's principal antagonist this time is the town boss, an outlaw who has killed the community's leading citizen. The dead man's grown children want to investigate the killing, but the outlaw puts a stop to this by hiring a dance-hall dame to pose as the kids' long-lost mother. Johnny isn't fooled by this subterfuge nor is his sidekick.

Western Renegades

1949

Why Girls Leave Home poster
5.7

In this crime drama, a young woman leaves her unhappy life at home to become a sophisticated night club singer. Her first job is nearly fatal when she entangles herself with the mobsters who own the joint and learns too much about their operation. Her boss decides to kill her and make it look like suicide. An intrepid reporter disbelieves the report and exposes the truth to the public.

Why Girls Leave Home

1945

Sagebrush Heroes poster
9.0

This Columbia western starring Charles Starrett finds Steve Randall (Charles Starrett) forming a radio show with Jimmy Wakely (Jimmy Wakely) and his Saddle Pals, and are in town for a rodeo. Reporter Connie Pearson (Constance Worth) persuades them to visit Marty Jones (Elvin Fields), a fatherless boy, who has been sent to a boy's home after stealing Steve's wallet, ran by Tom Goodwin (Forrest Taylor.) Marty tells Steve that the home is a phony and is a front for cattle rustlers. Steve passes the information on to Connie, who doesn't believe him, so he and Jimmy wire the ranch for sound. They are caught and Goodwin turns them over to Sheriff Barnes (Edmund Cobb), and then plans to skip the country

Sagebrush Heroes

1945