I have noticed that many of the bios that I have highlighted over the years are rather sad and depressing. This is an unfortunate regular aspect of working in Hollywood. Not everyone can be a star and not everyone that works as a character or juvenile actor in low budget films is able to maintain a career. For every Jackie Cooper, there are unfortunately many more Kenneth Howells.
A young and good looking actor, he had appeared in small roles in the early thirties, most notably as Frank Coughlan, Jr’s pal Harry Vanderpool in the Frolics of Youth short subjects. His big break came when he was cast as eldest son Jack Jones in 20th Century Fox’s Jones Family series of family oriented comedies. From 1936 to 1940, Howell starred in over fifteen Jones Family comedies like Educating Father (1936), Borrowing Trouble (1937) and The Jones Family in Hollywood (1939), most of the films being a combination of family sit com misunderstandings and slapstick humor. After the film On Their Own (1940), the series ended and so did Howell’s time at Fox.
His one major serial was co-starring with the Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys in Universal’s Junior G-Men (1940), playing Harry Trent, leader of the Junior G-Men who helps street kid Bobby Jordon and his gang find his missing father who’s been kidnapped by a group of fifth columnists out to take over the country. Though well into his thirties by this time the still youthful looking actor continued appearing in teen comedies like Pride of the Bowery (1940) and Henry Aldrich for President (1941), though in a much smaller capacity than in the previous decade.
When WWII broke out, the now married actor joined the Navy Medical Corps. According to IMBD, after the war he left his wife and daughter, having finally come to accept his true sexual orientation, and tried to continue his film career. But like so many returning GI’s in thee film industry, this proved difficult, his only known roles are a bit part as one of the street kids in Universal’s The Master Key (1945) serial, and a supporting role in Roy Rogers’ In Old Amarillo (1951).
Not much is known after this time, though his daughter did make contact with him in the early sixties. Howell would sadly take his own life a few years later.
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