~Joyce Compton~

Born: January 27, 1907 in Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Died: October 13, 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA
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more about
WAMPAS Baby
Stars~
~Biography~
American actress Joyce Compton was born into a traveling family; she received her schooling bit by
bit in classrooms from Texas to Toronto. In the company of her parents, Compton made the
Hollywood casting-office rounds in the mid-1920s, finally landing a role in What Fools Men (1925).
In 1926 she was designated a Wampas Baby Star (a publicity ploy created by the Western
Association of Motion Picture Advertisers), in the company of such future luminaries as Mary
Astor, Joan Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. Compton's career never quite
reached the heights of these contemporaries; small and delicate, she was advised by her parents
not to go out for large roles for fear of endangering her health. When talkies came in, she cornered
the market in squeaky-voiced dumb blondes, often applying her natural Southern accent for full
comic effect. She worked frequently in two-reel comedies with such funsters as Clark and
McCullough, Walter Catlett and Charley Chase. Compton's feature appearances were confined to
supporting roles as waitresses, good-time girls and ditzy Southern belles. Occasionally a big part
would come her way, and she'd make the most of it; her best role of the 1930s was nightclub singer
Dixie Belle Lee in The Awful Truth, whose striptease number "Gone with the Wind" is later
hilariously imitated by the film's star, Irene Dunne. Among Compton's favorite films was Sky
Murder (1939) an MGM "Nick Carter" mystery in which she played a deceptively dim-witted female
private eye. She married once, very briefly, in 1956; she lived in her well-appointed California home
with her parents until their deaths. Retiring from the screen in 1961, Compton worked from time to
time as a private nurse, preferring to spend her spare hours painting and designing clothes.

Biography by Hal Erickson, AllMovie.com
~Silent Filmography~
Soft Living (1928) .... Billie Wilson
The Border Cavalier (1927) .... Madge Lawton
Ankles Preferred (1927) .... Virginia
WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926 (1926) .... Herself
Syncopating Sue (1926) .... Marge Adams
Broadway Lady (1925) .... Phyllis Westbrook
What Fools Men (1925) .... Dorothy
Sally (1925)
The Golden Bed (1925) (uncredited) .... Bit Part
.