Joseph Haworth was born on April 7, 1855 in Providence, Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of an English artist and engineer, Benjamin Haworth, who came to this country before the Civil War, and Martha (O'Leary) Haworth, of Irish ancestry and English birth.
During the war his father died in a Southern prison camp, whereupon Martha Haworth took her family to Cleveland.
Haworth went to work in a newspaper office and in leisure hours devoted himself to elocution. When he was eighteen Charlotte Crampton, John Ellsler's leading lady, heard him read. Struck by his personality, his musical voice, his immense earnestness, she tendered him the part of the Duke of Buckingham to her Richard III at her benefit. This led to his engagement as general utility man in Ellsler's stock company, an excellent school for a young actor. For several seasons he trod the boards with stars, working his way to leading parts.
Before he was twenty he had supported Barrett, who commended his reading of his lines, and Booth, whose appreciation of his Laertes in Hamlet led to his offering Haworth, in 1878, a place in his company. The young actor accepted instead an engagement with the Boston Museum stock company, then in the zenith of its reputation. At his farewell to the Ellsler company he played Hamlet for the first time to the Ophelia of Effie Ellsler, for whom he had an unrequited attachment.
During the next three years he played everything, from Gilbert and Sullivan opera to old English comedies and Shakespeare. In November 1878 his singing of "He remained an Englishman" at the first performance in America of Pinafore brought down the house. In 1881, having played an effective Romeo with Mary Anderson, he was offered the post of leading man at the Boston theatre. He chose rather to join McCullough on a starring tour, and for two seasons, until McCullough's tragic collapse, he played such parts as Iago, Ingomar, Cassius, and Icilius. Thereafter until 1895 he was starring, first in Hoodman Blind, then in Paul Kauvar, which he made famous by four years of success, and later in an arduous repertory in which he alternated such plays as The Leavenworth Case, The Bells, Ruy Blas, and Rosedale, with Shakespearian revivals.
In 1895 he played a long engagement at the Castle Square Theater, Boston. For the next two seasons he played opposite Modjeska in her varied repertory. The more important of his later successes were made as the original John Storm in Hall Caine's play, The Christian, Rafael in The Ghetto, Vinicius in Quo Vadis, Cassius in Richard Mansfield's production of Julius Caesar, and, his last role, Prince Dimitri in Resurrection.
He died in 1903 at the peak of his achievement.
Haworth was one of the most intellectual and conscientious performers of serious parts on the American stage. If his ambition to become great in the full meaning of the word was scarcely realized, he was much more than talented. A good (popularly reputed a "great") Hamlet, he was a fine Malvolio, an impressive Richelieu. Modjeska called his Macbeth "well-characterized, " effective in the banquet and fight scenes. Winter, however, thought him unequal to the exacting demands of the part.
Haworth had real feeling, and in temperament he was an artist.
An erratic genius, half dashing man-about-town, half recluse, morbidly sensitive, generous even to his enemies, Haworth was a prey to fits of tragic depression which he tried to drown in drink. In appearance he was "not tall, but so slender he appeared so, " dark of skin, with dark hair, fine dark eyes, magnificent voice, and a mouth "firm-set for one so vacillating. " It has been said of him that he lost no opportunity to appear in classic drama and failed in no classic role he undertook.
Haworth never married.
