Everything about Claire Trevor totally explained
Claire Trevor (
March 8,
1910 -
April 8,
2000) was an
Academy Award-winning
American actress. She was nicknamed the "Queen of
Film Noir" because of her many appearances in
"bad girl” roles in film noir and other
black-and-white thrillers. She appeared in over 60 films.
Biography
Early life
Trevor was born as
Claire Wemlinger in
Bensonhurst,
Brooklyn,
New York, the only child of a 5th Avenue merchant-tailor and his wife. Her family was of
Irish American and
French American descent.
Career
Trevor's acting career spanned more than seven decades and included success in stage, radio, television and film. Trevor often played the hard-boiled blonde, and every conceivable type of "bad girl" role. After attending
American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late '20s in stock. By 1932 she was starring on Broadway; that same year she began appearing in Brooklyn-filmed
Vitaphone shorts. Her first credited film role was in the
1933 film
Life in the Raw, with her feature film debut coming that same year in
Jimmy and Sally (1933), with her portraying "Sally Johnson". From 1933 through
1938 Trevor starred in twenty nine films, often having either the lead role or the role of
heroine. In
1937 she starred with
Humphrey Bogart in
Dead End, which would lead to her being nominated for
Best Supporting Actress.
By
1939 she was well established as a solid "leading lady". Some of her most memorable performances during this period were opposite
John Wayne, including the classic 1939
western Stagecoach, which was Wayne's breakthrough role. She also starred opposite Wayne in
Allegheny Uprising that same year, and again in
1940 in
Dark Command. Another two of her more memorable roles was when she starred in
Murder, My Sweet opposite
Dick Powell, and fellow film noir flick
Born to Kill playing a divorcee who gets more than she bargained for by falling in love with a bad boy who impulsively murders.
Private life
Trevor married film producer Clark Andrews in 1938, but they divorced four years later. Her second marriage to Cylos William Dunsmoore produced a son, Charles. The marriage ended in divorce in 1947. The next year, Trevor married Milton Bren, another film producer and soon after moved to
Newport Beach, California.
In 1978 her son Charles Dunsmoore died in an airliner crash and her last husband, Milton Bren, died from a
brain tumor in 1979. Trevor retired from acting in 1987. She made a special Academy Awards Appearance in 1998 at the 70th Academy Awards.
She died of
respiratory failure in Newport Beach,
April 8,
2000 at the age of 90, survived by several stepchildren by her marriage to Bren. Trevor was cremated and her remains were scattered at sea.
Awards and nominations
Trevor seemed to have her best performances when starring with either John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart. Of the
Academy Award nominations and wins that she earned, two were starring opposite Bogart, and one was opposite Wayne. Although she wasn't nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Wayne's 1939 breakthrough film,
Stagecoach, the film itself received Academy Award nominations in four categories, winning two of them.
Her awards and accolades included:
Trevor won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her 1948 performance in Key Largo, co-starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall.
She was nominated again for an Academy Award for her performance in The High and the Mighty, a 1954 airplane disaster epic starring John Wayne.
In 1956, Trevor won an Emmy for Best Live Television Performance by an Actress for Dodsworth, with Fredric March, on NBC's Producers' Showcase.
The Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine was named in Trevor's honor. Both her Oscar and Emmy trophies are on display in the Arts Plaza there, next to the Claire Trevor Theatre.
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Filmography
Further Information
Get more info on 'Claire Trevor'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://claire_trevor.totallyexplained.com">Claire Trevor Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
