Violet Hopson

Biography

Elma Kate Victoria Karkeek—later the silver-screen Violet Hopson—first saw daylight in 1891 on the South Australian docks of Port Augusta. Still a child, she joined the touring Pollard Opera Company, skipping across Australia and New Zealand between 1898 and 1900, before sailing to America with her older sister Zoe. Broadway lights beckoned, but London boards soon claimed her; within a few seasons she could switch from drawing-room tragedy to breezy farce without dropping a cue. In 1910 she stepped before a camera for Cricks & Martin, playing the flustered heroine of the slapstick short *Mr. Tubby’s Triumph* opposite Johnny Butt. The flicker was a hit, and Hepworth Studios wasted no time casting the dark-haired Australian as their “Dear Delightful Villainess.” Between 1913 and 1919 she headlined lavish melodramas—*The Vicar of Wakefield*, *Barnaby Rudge*, *A Daughter of Eve*—that shipped her image around the world as the epitome of English grace. Off-screen, her marriage to actor Alec Worcester (stage name Alexander Worster), sealed in Luton in 1909, cracked under the strain of his affairs and absences; a 1919 divorce decree cited adultery and desertion. Two children—Nicholas (b. 1910) and Jessica (b. 1913)—were already running around her dressing-room. Once freed, she did what no English actress had yet dared: she formed her own production unit, partnering with director Walter West. Through the early 1920s she hop-scotched between cockney sparrows (*Vi of Smith’s Alley*, 1921) and satin-clad society dames (*Beautiful Kitty*, 1923; *The Great Turf Mystery*, 1924), proving range was more than a publicity word. Sound stages arrived; her voice, once so commanding in theatres, was rarely asked for. She accepted a handful of bit parts, bowed out quietly in 1933 with *One Precious Year*, and lived four more decades in discreet retirement. On 21 July 1973 she died at Princess Louise Hospital, Kensington, the register reclaiming her as Elma Kate Worster. A final curtain call at Kensal Green Crematorium sent the once-glimmering “Violet Hopson” up in gentle smoke.