R.I.P. Joyce Howard

[Reza]

Latimes.com 12/3/2010

PASSINGS: JOYCE HOWARD

British film, stage actress and writer Joyce Howard, 88, who co-starred with James Mason in the 1940s thrillers
"Terror House" and "They Met in the Dark," died of natural causes Nov. 23 in Santa Monica, her family said.

Born in 1922 in London, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and soon was acting on stage.

She made more than a dozen films from 1941 to 1950, playing the title role in "Mrs. Fitzherbert" and appearing as a determined young woman who joins the military in "The Gentle Sex."

Throughout World War II, she continued to perform in the London theater, even as the city was bombed, her family said.

After marrying actor Basil Sydney in the 1940s, Howard left acting to raise their three children and turned to writing plays. She also wrote the novels "Two Persons Singular" (1960) and "A Private View" (1961).

After a divorce, she had a brief marriage to Joel Shor, an American psychoanalyst, and moved to Malibu in the early 1960s.

To support her family as a single mother, she went to work in the movie industry as a story analyst and eventually became an executive story editor for Paramount Television responsible for property
acquisition and development.