Claire Trevor had a voice like scrap iron and silk. A mix of tough and soft, like the lady herself. She was born Claire Wemlinger in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York on March 8, 1909 (or 1910 depending on the source), the only child of a 5th Avenue merchant and his wife. After graduating high school, Trevor took art classes at Columbia University and studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. When her father's business failed during the early years of the Great Depression, she had to quit school and began to look for work in the New York theaters, later recalling "The only thing I knew how to do was act. And at that point, I didn't even know much about that." By the early 1930s she was appearing on Broadway and moonlighting in Warner Brother's Vitaphone shorts which were shot at the New York studios, a common practice for Broadway actors in those days.

She came to Hollywood and began to get work in feature films at the Fox Studios (later 20th Century Fox), beginning in 1933 with Life in the Raw followed by Jimmy and Sally (1933), Baby Take a Bow (1934, with the studio's child star, Shirley Temple), and Dante's Inferno (1935) with Spencer Tracy and a very young Rita Hayworth. By 1937, when she co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in Dead End for the Samuel Goldwyn Studios, Fox had lost interest with her and she was unhappy with the roles they were offering. Dead End would be very different.

Joel McCrea and Sylvia Sidney played the couple trying to find a way out of the gutter, and Humphrey Bogart and Claire Trevor were the couple who would never escape. Trevor's character, Francey, begins life as a 'good girl' but economic conditions force her into a life of prostitution. Her work in the film is extraordinary and realistic, considering that the Production Code would not allow her profession to be made explicit or the word prostitution itself to be said on-screen. Likewise, Trevor's encounter with ex-boyfriend Bogart is one of the most wrenching scenes in a 1930s film. When Bogart returns from prison and realizes what Trevor has become in his absence, he's both disgusted and heartbroken, asking "Why didn't you starve first?" Trevor snaps back "Why didn't you?" Her world weary posture, the expression on her face, and her voice all convey to the audience what she is and that she is ill, probably with syphilis. Although it was little more than a cameo appearance, Trevor was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. The role seemed to get Trevor typecast as a "bad girl" and she played quite a few of those in the next decade, especially in the film noirs of the 1940s.

Her next important role also had Trevor receiving star billing: John Ford's now classic Stagecoach (1939). Originally, the part of "saloon gal" (read: prostitute) Dallas was meant for Marlene Dietrich; the Ringo Kid, played by John Wayne, was supposed to go to Gary Cooper. Dallas is the original "whore with a heart of gold" and much more multi-dimensional than was usually seen in Hollywood films. Trevor infuses the character with a vulnerability that Dietrich could never have expressed. There is nothing in Dallas that would mark her as a prostitute except for the opening scenes showing her being kicked out of town along with Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell) and the way she is treated by the other passengers who know what she is. The Ringo Kid, who joins the stagecoach later, mistakes her for a "good girl". He wouldn't have made that mistake if Dietrich had the role.

The 1940s were a busy time for Trevor, with strong performances in films like Murder, My Sweet (1944), and the film for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Key Largo (1948). In it, she plays Gaye Dawn (rumored to be based on Lucky Luciano's girlfriend Gay Orlova), an alcoholic singer who is abused by her boyfriend, Edward G. Robinson. Hal Erikson wrote "Claire Trevor's virtuoso performance as a besotted ex-nightclub singer won her an Academy Award -- as predicted by her admiring fellow actors, who watched her go through several very difficult scenes in long, uninterrupted takes." One of the most difficult for her was the scene in which she had to sing "Moanin' Low". Trevor wasn't a singer and expected some help, or at the very least, some music to sing by. Huston gave her nothing but the word "Action!" and Trevor, aghast, began to sing badly. It was what Huston wanted. At the end of the song, she asks Robinson for a drink, but he sadistically refuses, telling her that her singing was "rotten." Despite it all, Trevor remembered the film fondly, "Key Largo... I could have stayed on that picture for the rest of my life. I adored it." The night of the Academy Awards, Trevor found herself in competition with Jean Simmons for Hamlet, Agnes Moorehead for Johnny Belinda, and Barbara Bel Geddes and Ellen Corby for I Remember Mama. Of the moment her name was announced, Trevor recalled, "There's sort of an explosion which makes you half deaf and blind. Somehow you find yourself on the stage and you begin to hear the applause."

As many actresses have found, winning Academy Awards doesn't always lead to better roles. Trevor was no exception. Like others, she made the transition to television when Hollywood no longer offered good roles, but she preferred to focus more on her personal life. She once said about marriage, "What a holler would ensue if people had to pay the minister as much to marry them as they have to pay a lawyer to get them a divorce." Claire Trevor knew what she was talking about. She had been married twice and had a son before she was forty, but her third marriage to film producer turned real estate investor Milton Bren was the most successful. She became involved in philanthropic works (in particular a $500,000 donation to the University of California Irvine theater, which the university named in her honor), painting, and her family, which included her son Charles Dunsmoore and her two stepsons, Peter and Donald Bren. Tragically, her son Charles was killed in the 1978 Pacific Southwest airplane disaster over San Diego and her husband passed away the following year of a brain tumor. Shortly after her death on April 10, 2000, her stepsons donated several million dollars to the University of California Irvine, which established the Claire Trevor Bren School of the Arts in her honor, saying "One of the many qualities that made Claire special was her strong support of young people interested in exploring the arts," said Donald Bren, stepson of Claire Trevor and chairman of The Irvine Company. "She was also very impressed with the quality of the students and faculty at UCI's School of the Arts, so this gift is a very appropriate reflection of both her own artistic legacy and her commitment to the artists and performers of the future." "Claire was a continuous student of all forms of art, and through the arts she expanded her understanding of people," said Peter Bren.

Poet Rod McKuen wrote this tribute to Trevor on his website after her death: "I first met her at Universal and got to know her better years later at Rock Hudson's weekly Tuesday night Bridge sessions. I have no interest in Bridge so I became the resident bartender and boy did they keep me busy. Around midnight she'd sit out a hand and we'd go to the kitchen and whip up a late night supper together. She was funny, warm and a good cook. Over the years we exchanged a lot of recipes and averted many a disaster in the kitchen until I finally intimidated Rock into springing for a new gas burning range. Often I'd pick her up at the hairdresser and we'd shop together on Tuesday afternoon for the coming meal or discuss the grocery list on the phone. She always had a new joke and the sunniest disposition imaginable. I'll remember how beautiful she was in every way, her sharp intellect, her fairness toward everyone and the dozens of hours of joy she gave all of us on radio, television and the big screen. The good citizens of Orange County, California will remember Claire Trevor Bren for her millions in philanthropy and the many hours she spent devoted to the arts."

by Lorraine LoBianco

Sources:

The Internet Movie Database

http://www.mckuen.com

www.movieforum.com

Obituary, South Coast Today, April 2000

Tribute to Claire Trevor Bren by Rachel Gines, http://www.newu.uci.edu

www.brainyquote.com

http://www.arts.uci.edu