Trevor, Claire (1909–2000)

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Trevor, Claire (1909–2000)

American actress who received an Academy Award for her performance in Key Largo. Born Claire Wemlinger on March 8, 1909, in New York City; died on April 8, 2000, in Newport Beach, California; attended George Washington High School, New York City; attended Columbia University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; married Clark Andrews (a producer), in 1938 (divorced 1942); married Cylos William Dunsmoore (divorced 1947); married Milton Bren (a producer), in 1948 (died 1979); children: (second marriage) Charles Dunsmoore (died 1978).

Selected filmography:

Life in the Raw (1933); The Last Trial (1933); The Mad Game (1933); Jimmy and Sally (1933); Hold That Girl (1934); Baby Take a Bow (1934); Wild Gold (1934); Black Sheep (1925); Dante's Inferno (1935); Navy Wife (1935); My Marriage (1936); Song and Dance Man (1936); Human Cargo (1936); To Mary—With Love (1936); Star for a Night (1936); 15 Maiden Lane (1936); Career Woman (1936); Time Out for Romance (1937); King of Gamblers (1937); One Mile from Heaven (1937); Dead End (1937); Second Honeymoon (1937); Big Town Girl (1937); Walking Down Broadway (1938); The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938); Valley of the Giants (1938); Five of a Kind (1936); Stagecoach (1939); I Stole a Million (1939); Allegheny Uprising (1939); Dark Command (1940); Honky Tonk (1941); Texas (1941); The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942); Crossroads (1942); Street of Chance (1942); The Desperadoes (1943); The Woman of the Town (1943); Murder My Sweet (1944); Johnny Angel (1945); Crack-Up (1946); The Bachelor's Daughters (1946); Born to Kill (1947); Raw Deal (1948); Key Largo (1948); The Babe Ruth Story (1948); The Velvet Touch (1948); The Lucky Stiff (1949); Borderline (1950); Hard Fast and Beautiful (1951); Best of the Badmen (1951); Hoodlum Empire (1952); My Man and I (1952); Stop—You're Killing Me (1953); The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953); The High and the Mighty (1954); Man Without a Star (1955); Lucy Gallant (1955); The Mountain (1956); Marjorie Morningstar(1958); Two Weeks in Another Town (1962); The Stripper (1963); How to Murder Your Wife (1965); The Cape Town Affair (South Africa, 1967); Kiss Me Goodbye (1982).

A veteran of over 100 films, blonde, sultry-voiced Claire Trevor was relegated to B movies for most of her career, but proved to be a highly accomplished actress when given the opportunity. Best remembered for her portrayal of the former singer and boozy mistress of gangster Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo (1948), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, Trevor also received Oscar nominations for her roles in Dead End (1937) and The High and the Mighty (1954).

Trevor was born in 1909 in New York City, and attended Columbia University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. "From the time I was a child, the arts have played an important role in my life," she said. "I think using one's imagination to the fullest is necessary for a happy life, and one of the best ways to use one's imagination is by playacting."

She gained her early acting experience in stock and in a series of Vitaphone shorts, which were filmed in Brooklyn. In 1932, she made her Broadway debut opposite Edward Arnold in Whistling in the Dark, and launched her feature film career a year later, signing a five-year contract with Fox. Although usually typecast as a gangster moll, a prostitute, or a saloon floozy, Trevor never lost her respect for the old studio system. "You had to do a lot of work that you didn't want to do," she recalled in a 1995 interview, "that's true—a lot of crummy pictures. But they knew how to build a star and they knew what to do with you. They also taught you everything."

Also notable among her early films was the classic Stagecoach (1939), in which she played a frontier prostitute who is reformed by John Wayne. It was one of her favorite pictures because of John Ford's direction; she also liked Key Largo because of its outstanding cast, which included Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall . During filming, when she admitted to director John Huston that she was having trouble

playing the drunk scene, he told to think of herself as "all elbows." That solved it. "I could have stayed on that picture for the rest of my life," she said. "I adored it." She played opposite Robinson again in the later film The Stripper (1963), accepting the role as his harpy wife after it was turned down by Jean Arthur . Her last film appearance was as Sally Field 's mother in Kiss Me Goodbye.

In the 1950s, when her film career began to slow, Trevor turned to television. In 1956, she won an Emmy Award for her television performance in "Dodsworth" on NBC's "Producers Showcase." She appeared on "The Love Boat" in 1977 and on "Murder She Wrote" in 1984. As late as 1987, she was seen in the television movie "Breaking Home Ties."

Trevor was married three times and had one son, Charles, who died in an airplane crash in 1978. Her last husband, producer Milton Bren, died the following year. The actress spent her later years in Newport Beach, California, where she died on April 6, 2000. "Claire was a special woman whose lifelong passion was to bring joy to others," said her stepson Donald Bren following her death. "Her legacy will be the many ways she touched people."