Oscar Profile #252: Claire Trevor

Born March 10, 1910 in Brooklyn, New York of German, French and Irish descent, Claire Trevor (birth name Claire Wemlinger) became known as The Queen of Film Noir because of her portrayals of bad girls in many films noir and other thrillers.

After completing high school, Trevor attended Columbia University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, performing in stock in the late 1920s. She made her film debut in Vitaphone shorts in 1931. She had her first starring role in a full-length feature in 1933’s Life in the Raw. Her major films of the 1930s included Baby Take a Bow, Dante’s Inferno, Dead End for which she received her first Oscar nomination, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Stagecoach and Allegheney Uprising. From 1937-1940 she co-starred with Edward G. Robinson in the hit radio show, Big Town, marrying the show’s producer, Clark Andrews in 1938. They would divorce in 1942.

Trevor’s considerable 1940s output include Dark Command, Honky Tonk, Murder, My Sweet, Johnny Angel, Crack-Up, Born to Kill, The Velvet Touch and Key Largo for which she won an Oscar on her second nomination. She married her second husband, Navy Lt. Cylos William Dunsmore in 1943 and had her only child, her son Charles. They divorced in 1947. In 1948 she married third husband, producer Milton Bren, a divorced father of two sons, and moved to Newport Beach.

In the 1950s, Trevor continued in starring roles while beginning to take on supporting roles, receiving a third Oscar nomination for the 1954 all-star cast film, The High and the Mighty and winning an Emmy for the 1957 TV production of Dodsworth. Other films included Man Without a Star, The Mountain and Marjorie Morningstar. The 1960s found her more active on TV than the big screen, but she did manage to make welcome appearances in Two Weeks in Another Town, The Stripper and How to Murder Your Wife. 1967’s The Cape Town Affair would be her last screen appearance for the next fifteen years.

In 1978, her son was killed in the worst air disaster in California history when PSA Flight 182 was struck by a private plane and crashed over San Diego. The following year her husband died of a brain tumor. After those losses, Trevor moved to New York where led a bus social life for many years, eventually returning to Newport Beach, not far from the City of Irvine, where the Claire Trevor School of the Arts would become an integral part of UCLA after her death.

Trevor made a major comeback in 1982’s Kiss Me Goodbye. She later appeared in episodes of The Love Boat and Murder She Wrote, making her last appearance in the 1987 TV movie, Breaking Home Ties.

Claire Trevor died on April 8, 2000 at the age of 90. She is survived by her two stepsons and extended family.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

STAGECOACH (1939), directed by John Ford

By 1939 Trevor had already been an Oscar nominee playing Humphrey Bogart’s thinly disguised prostitute girlfriend in 1937’s Dead End. She was also in the third year of her highly popular weekly radio show, Big Town opposite Edward G. Robinson. She was a bigger star then than John Wayne who is the central character in Stageocach, but because of her larger celebrity gets top billing over him, something that would not happen in their future parings.

Trevor’s tough but vulnerable dance hall gal Dallas, an oft-used euphemism for prostitute in westerns, is, however, one of her best remembered performances, topped only by Thomas Mitchell’s Oscar-winning turn as the alcoholic doctor.

MURDER, MY SWEET (1944), directed by Edward Dmytryk

Trevor’s reputation as The Queen of Film Noir lies primarily in her hard-boiled performances in this opposite a career redefining Dick Powell and 1947’s Born to Kill opposite Lawrence Tierney. Filmed under the title of Raymond Chandler’s source novel, Farewell, My Lovely, the title was changed by Warner Bros. because of test audience’s perceptions that it was another of Powell’s musicals.

Powell as hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe and Trevor as a duplicitous femme fatale are both at the height of their considerable talents here. The film was successfully remade 32 years later under its original title with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling.

KEY LARGO (1948), directed by John Huston

Richard Brooks wrote this sizzling adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play and John Huston directed it the same year as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre for which he won an Oscar while steering both his father Walter Huston to an Oscar for that and Trevor to one for this.

Trevor pulls out all the stops in her heartbreaking portrayal of gangster Edward G. Robinson’s alcoholic gun-moll, a performance that is rightfully considered one of the great no-contest wins in Oscar history. Despite bravura performances from Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore and Robinson, Trevor is the one you can’t take your eyes of for most of the film.

THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (1954), directed by William A. Wellman

Trevor was basically playing herself in this taut, grandfather of airplane disaster movies. John Wayne, Robert Stack, Laraine Day, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris, Paul Kelly, Robert Newton, David Brian, Doe Avedon and a host of other scene stealers compete for attention as the plane reaches the point of no return in its quest to stay in the air until it can successfully land on its flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles.

The film racked up seven Oscar nominations, winning for Best Score, but only two of its players were nominated for their performances, Jan Sterling and Trevor.

KISS ME GOODBYE (1982), directed by Robert Mulligan

Trevor returned to the big screen for one last time after an absence of fifteen years. At the age of 72, she was still a formidable presence as Sally Field’s quick-witted and witty mother. She and 77-year-old Mildred Natwick in her next-to-last big screen appearance, as the owner of a bed and breakfast inn, all but steal the film from Field, Jeff Bridges as her fiancé and James Caan as the ghost of her late husband.

Both Trevor and Natwick would later appear in TV’s Murder She Wrote albeit in separate episodes.