Claire Trevor
Birth : 1910-03-08, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Death : 2000-04-08
History
Claire Trevor (née Wemlinger; March 8, 1910 – April 8, 2000) was an American actress. She appeared in 65 feature films from 1933 to 1982, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Key Largo (1948), and received nominations for her roles in The High and the Mighty (1954) and Dead End (1937). Trevor received top billing, ahead of John Wayne, for Stagecoach (1939).
Trevor's acting career spanned more than seven decades and included successes in stage, radio, television, and film. She often played the hard-boiled blonde, and every conceivable type of 'bad girl' role.
She made her stage debut in the summer of 1929 with a repertory company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She subsequently returned to New York, where she appeared in a number of Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone short films and performed in summer stock theatre. In 1932, she starred on Broadway as the female lead in Whistling in the Dark.
Trevor made her film debut in Jimmy and Sally (1933). From 1933 to 1938, Trevor starred in 29 films, often having either the lead role or the role of heroine. In 1937, she was the second lead actress (after top-billed Sylvia Sidney) in Dead End, with Humphrey Bogart, which led to her nomination for Best Supporting Actress. From 1937 to 1940, she appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the popular radio series Big Town, while continuing to make movies. In the early 1940s, she also was a regular on The Old Gold Don Ameche Show on the NBC Red Radio Network, starring with Ameche in presentations of plays by Mark Hellinger. In 1939, she was well established as a solid leading lady. One of her more memorable performances during this period includes the Western Stagecoach (1939).
Two of Trevor's most memorable roles were opposite Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944) and with Lawrence Tierney in Born to Kill (1947). In Key Largo (1948), Trevor played Gaye Dawn, a washed-up, alcoholic nightclub singer and gangster's moll. For that role, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her third and final Oscar nomination was for her performance in The High and the Mighty (1954). In 1957, she won an Emmy for her role in the Producers' Showcase episode entitled "Dodsworth". Trevor moved into supporting roles in the 1950s, with her appearances becoming very rare after the mid-1960s. She played Charlotte, the mother of Kay (Sally Field) in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982). Her final television role was for the 1987 television film, Norman Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties. Trevor made a guest appearance at the 70th Academy Awards in 1998.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard.
[biography (excerpted) from Wikipedia]
Self (archive footage)
This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.
Self
Jack L. Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner and Sam Warner were siblings who were born in Poland and emigrated to Canada near the turn of the century. In 1903, the brothers entered the budding motion picture business. In time, the Warner Brothers moved into film production and would open their own studio in 1923.
Grace Porter
Inspired by a Norman Rockwell painting, this 1950s coming of age drama centers on a young man leaving home to attend college, where he will learn the lessons in becoming a man. While his family must deal with a life threatening illness.
(archive footage)
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War.
Charlotte
Not until three years after the death of her husband Jolly, Kay dares to move back into their former home, persuaded by her new fiancée Rupert. But soon her worst expectations come true, when not only her old memories haunt her, but also Jolly's ghost, who doesn't approve of her new mate. Invisible to anyone but Kay, he tries to prevent the wedding.
Sam Williams
South African secret agents attempt to save confidential microfilm before it falls into the hands of Communists. A color remake of the Sam Fuller film, Pickup on South Street.
Edna
Stanley Ford leads an idyllic bachelor life. He is a nationally syndicated cartoonist whose Bash Brannigan series provides him with a luxury townhouse and a full-time valet, Charles. When he wakes up the morning after the night before - he had attended a friend's stag party - he finds that he is married to the very beautiful woman who popped out of the cake - and who doesn't speak a word of English. Despite his initial protestations, he comes to like married life and even changes his cartoon character from a super spy to a somewhat harried husband.
Helen Baird
An aging former movie starlet whose Hollywood career went nowhere, now reduced to dancing with a third-rate touring show, finds herself stranded in a small town where she's courted by an infatuated and naive local teenager.
Clara Kruger
After spending three years in an asylum, a washed-up actor views a minor assignment from his old director in Rome as a chance for personal and professional redemption.
Rose Morgenstern
While working as a counselor at a summer camp, college-student Marjorie Morgenstern falls for 32-year-old Noel Airman, a would-be dramatist working at a nearby summer theater. Like Marjorie, he is an upper-middle-class New York Jew, but has fallen away from his roots, and Marjorie's parents object among other things to his lack of a suitable profession. Noel himself warns Marjorie repeatedly that she's much too naive and conventional for him, but they nonetheless fall in love.
Marie
Selfish Chris Teller pressures his older brother, a retired climber, to accompany him on a treacherous Alpine climb to loot the bodies of plane crash victims.
Lady MacBeth
Director Robert Parrish's 1955 drama, spanning many years, stars Jane Wyman as a spirited western shopkeeper who watches as her small store flourishes and grows into a hugely profitable business empire. The cast also includes Charlton Heston, Claire Trevor, Thelma Ritter, William Demarest and Wallace Ford.
Idonee
A wandering cowboy gets caught up in a range war.
Self
Live television broadcast of the world premiere. Described by various participants as the biggest world premiere in memory, even bigger than the Academy Awards.
May Holst
Dan Roman is a veteran pilot haunted by a tragic past. Now relegated to second-in-command cockpit assignments he finds himself on a routine Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight - one that takes a terrifying suspense-building turn when disaster strikes high above the Pacific Ocean at the point of no return.
Josie Sullivan
Having been a spy for Quantrill's raiders during the Civil War, Jeff Travis thinking himself a wanted man, flees to Prescott Arizona where he runs into Jules Mourret who knows of his past. He takes a job on the stage line that Mourret is trying to steal gold from. When Mourret's men kill a friend of his he sets out to get Mourret and his men. When his plan to have another gang get Mourret fails, he has to go after them himself.
Nora Marko
A gangster and his wife attempt to go straight. Comedy. Remake of the 1938 film "A Slight Case of Murder".
Mrs. Elena Ames
In California, a Mexican-American is falsely accused of killing the farmer he was working for after the racist farmer stiffed his immigrant employee with a bad check.
Connie Williams
It's a deadly play for power when a Mafia chieftain's top gun goes straight and threatens to testify against the big boss and his cruel, nationwide network of crime. The picture, which was shot in a semi-documentary style, was inspired by the Kefauver investigations of 1950-51.
Lily
After the North defeats the South, Union Maj. Jeff Clanton heads to Missouri to provide the Confederacy's Quantrill's Raiders a chance to claim allegiance to the Union, thereby clearing their wanted status. But standing in Clanton's way are the corrupt lawmen Joad and Fowler, who would rather keep the men outlaws to collect the reward on their heads. After Joad and Fowler frame Clanton for murder, he manages to escape, becoming an outlaw himself.
Millie Farley
When most people look at Florence Farley, they see a pretty teenager. But when Milly Farley looks at her daughter she sees something else: a tennis prodigy who could be Milly’s ticket to money and fame.
Madeleine Haley
Two undercover agents infiltrate a drug-smuggling ring in Mexico, thee find them selves falling in love with each other. Neither is aware of the other's identity As they decide to make a run for the border.
Marguerite Seaton
A lawyer spooks gangsters by faking a framed singer's electrocution.
Claire Hodgson Ruth
The baseball player goes from wayward youth to Boston Red Sox pitcher to New York Yankees home-run hero.
Gaye Dawn
A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.
Marian Webster
After accidentally killing her lecherous producer, a famous actress tries to hide her guilt.
Pat Cameron
A revenge-seeking gangster is sent to prison after being framed for a crime he didn't commit. After seducing a beautiful young woman, he uses her to help him carry out his plot for vengeance, leading him to the crazy pyromaniac who set him up.
Helen Brent
Helen Brent has just received a Reno divorce. That night, she discovers her neighbor Laury Palmer and a gentleman caller murdered in Palmer's home. The killer is her neighbor's other boyfriend Sam Wilde, an insanely jealous man who won't abide anyone "cutting in" on him.
Terry Cordell
Art curator George Steele experiences a train wreck...which never happened. Is he cracking up, or the victim of a plot?
Cynthia Davis
A department store floor walker is persuaded by four husband-seeking salesgirls to pose as their father in a Long Island mansion which they have rented by pooling resources and pretending to be wealthy themselves.
Lilah 'Lily' Gustafson
George Raft plays a sailor who sets out to solve his father's mysterious death.
Helen Grayle
After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit.
Dora Hand
Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City. Preferring socializing to peacekeeping, Masterson falls in love with Dora Hand, the obligatory golden-hearted chorus girl whose concern for the welfare of her fellow citizens at time reaches Madonna-like dimensions. When Dora is shot down cattle baron King Kennedy, Masterson begins taking his job seriously. After taking care of Kennedy, Masterson determines to enshrine the memory of Dora, whose efforts to clean up Dodge City were largely ignored by the "decent" townsfolk.
Ruth Jones
A 4F military school teacher's lie about being accepted for active duty causes problems on the home front.
Countess Maletta
Popular mailcoach driver Uncle Willie is in fact in league with the town's crooked banker. They plan to have the bank robbed after emptying it, and when Willie's choice for this doesn't show in time, he gets some local boys to do it. When his man does turn up he decides to stick around, as he is pals with the sheriff and also takes a shine to Willie's daughter Allison. This gives the bad men several new problems.
Ruth Dillon
In this Cornell Woolrich thriller, a man's memory is recovered after being injured by falling construction material. Discovering a year-long lapse, he returns to his old life and discovers a lot of mysterious happenings.
Michelle Allaine
A French diplomat who's recovered from amnesia is blackmailed over crimes he can't remember.
Connie Dawson
Author writes about his experiences sailing at sea, struggles to get his work published.
Michael 'Mike' King
Two Virginians are heading for a new life in Texas when they witness a stagecoach being held up. They decide to rob the robbers and make off with the loot. To escape a posse, they split up and don't see each other again for a long time. When they do meet up again, they find themselves on different sides of the law. This leads to the increasing estrangement of the two men, who once thought of themselves as brothers.
Pearl
Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.
Miss Mary McCloud
When transplanted Texan Bob Seton arrives in Lawrence, Kansas he finds much to like about the place, especially Mary McCloud, daughter of the local banker. Politics is in the air however. It's just prior to the civil war and there is already a sharp division in the Territory as to whether it will remain slave-free. When he gets the opportunity to run for marshal, Seton finds himself running against the respected local schoolteacher, William Cantrell. Not is what it seems however. While acting as the upstanding citizen in public, Cantrell is dangerously ambitious and is prepared to do anything to make his mark, and his fortune, on the Territory. When he loses the race for marshal, he forms a group of raiders who run guns into the territory and rob and terrorize settlers throughout the territory. Eventually donning Confederate uniforms, it is left to Seton and the good citizens of Lawrence to face Cantrell and his raiders in one final clash.
Janie MacDougall
South western Pennsylvania area of colonial America, 1760s. Colonial distaste and disapproval of the British government is starting to surface. Many local colonists have been killed by American Indians who are armed with rifles supplied by white traders.
Laura Benson
A cabbie and petty thief dreams of the big heist that will end his thieving ways.
Dallas
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.
Christine Nelson
Rival reporters compete to sign the Wyatt Quintuplets to be guests on their radio shows.
Lee Roberts
A lumberman takes on a sleezy corporate giant wanting to move in and do whatever it takes to drive everyone else out of business.
Jo Keller
A wealthy society doctor decides to research the medical aspects of criminal behaviour by becoming one himself. He joins a gang of thieves and proceeds to wrest leadership of the gang away from it's extremely resentful leader.
Joan Bradley
Five closely knit showgirls sign a pact to reunite one year after the closing of their Broadway production, but the lives of all five take many different turns, often for the worse.
Fay Loring
When a department store songstress becomes a radio star she keeps her identity secret, as the "Masked Countess", because he estranged husband is a crook.
Marcia
Raoul McLish stops over in Miami Beach where he runs into his ex-wife, Vicky Benton, and her new husband Bob, a belt manufacturer. At first Bob enjoys Raoul's presence - in part because Vicky is his not Raoul's and in part because Raoul is a lot of fun. The fun wears thin for Bob as his seriousness and possessiveness take over. When Bob leaves for a few days to settle a labor dispute at his factory, Vicky and Raoul spend time together, Winchell's column implies untoward behavior, Bob barks at Vicky, and that gets her back up. Can things be sorted out? Help comes from Raoul's upright valet, McTavish, and a principled cigarette girl, Joy, whom Raoul picks up.
Francey
Mobster "Baby Face" Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, dropping in on his mother, who rejects him because of his gangster lifestyle, and his old girlfriend, Francey, now a syphilitic prostitute. Martin also crosses paths with Dave, a childhood friend struggling to make it as an architect, and the Dead End Kids, a gang of young boys roaming the streets of the city's East Side slums.
Lucy 'Tex' Warren
A female journalist travels to a new neighborhood after getting a (false) lead and is surprised by what she finds.
Dixie Moore
A fast moving and low budget crime drama seasoned with mystery & comedy.
Barbara Blanchard
A girl escapes marriage and hitchhikes with a young man in whose car a jewel thief has planted his loot.
Carroll Aiken
A young woman graduates from a New York City law school, returns to her small hometown, and finds her first case is defending a childhood friend accused of murder. Director Lewis Seiler's 1936 courtroom drama stars Claire Trevor, Isabel Jewell, Michael Whalen, Gene Lockhart, Eric Linden, Charles Middleton, Edward Brophy, Kathleen Lockhart, Guinn Williams, El Brendel, Sterling Holloway, Ray Brown, Howard Hickman, Frank McGlynn Sr., Charles Waldron Sr., Spencer Charters and Eily Malyon.
Jane Martin
Insurance investigator Trevor pretends to be a thief to enter a gang of jewel thieves.
Nina Lind
Blind Mrs. Lind comes to American to visit her three children whom she thinks are successful.
Winners of the Lucky Stars National Dance Contest - one woman from each state of the United States - are welcomed to Palm Springs. Palm Springs being the desert playground for the movie stars, the women are introduced to the cavalcade of stars vacationing in Palm Springs at the time.
Kitty Brant
Mary stands by Jack after the Depression of 1929 but considers divorce when he again becomes successful by 1935. Bill, who loves Mary, works at keeping them together.
Bonnie Brewster
Bonnie Brewster and "Packy" Campbell, rival reporters on competing newspapers, team up to put an end to a smuggling gang that brings illegal aliens to the United States, and then makes further victims of them by extortion payments. They go to Vancouver, Canada and board a ship carrying aliens. But the gang recognizes them as reporters and gang-henchmen Tony Scula (Ralf Harolde) and Ira Conklin take them off the ship. But Campbell recognizes Scula as the gunman who killed Carmen Zoro.
Julia Carroll
Julia and Hap are a dance team. He drinks and gambles, she succeeds for a while with the help of producer Alan.
Carol Barton
When gangster's bullets put an end to the career of H.J. Barton, underworld gambling czar who masquerades as a respectable member of high society, his daughter Carol is left to bear the brunt of social stigma.
Vicky Blake
A Hawaiian naval nurse weds a widowed officer partly because he has a crippled daughter.
Elizabeth "Betty" McWade Carter
A carny builds a gambling empire at the expense of his family's wellbeing.
Janette Foster
On an ocean liner crossing a professional gambler comes to the aid of a naive young man victimized by a jewel thief. The young man turns out to be his son he's not seen since infancy.
Betty Ingals
Betty Ingals walks out on her fiancé in search of adventure. She gets more than she bargained for when she stumbles upon a gang of bootleggers.
Elinor Norton
A romantic triangle during WW I provides the basis of this drama. The trouble begins when a young wife gets involved with a coffee baron while her husband is off fighting WW I. Her shell-shocked husband finally returns. He is terribly jealous. To help him, the wife takes him to a Western dude ranch. Her lover also goes, and the two men soon become friends. The coffee magnate helps to cure him, but then breaks his heart by telling him that he and the wife are planning to run away.
Kay Ellison
Eddie Ellison is an ex-con who spent time in Sing-Sing prison. Kay marries him as soon as he serves his time. Five years later, Eddie and his ex-convict buddy Larry, have both gone straight, and Eddie and Kay have a beautiful little girl named Shirley. However, Welch has kept a close eye on them for years. He believes in "once a criminal, always a criminal." Then, when Eddie's employer's wife's pearls go missing, it comes out that Eddie and Larry both spent time in prison, and they're fired. Welch suspects that Eddie and Larry have something to do with the theft of the pearls. Will Welch prove that Eddie and Larry had something to do with the theft, or will the truth prevail?
Jerry Jordan
A young man desperately in love with a nightclub singer sees an opportunity to spend some time alone with her when they're traveling through the Nevada gold country, and he takes the carburetor off her car and throws it in the river, stranding them there. They wind up staying at the cabin of a crusty old prospector, and soon the manager of a nightclub act shows up with his bevy of beautiful showgirls.
Tonie Bellamy
"That girl" is newspaper sob-sister Tony Bellamy (Claire Trevor), whose nose for news gets her into one jam after another, especially when she poses as an exotic dancer to get the goods on a gangster.
Sally Johnson
Jimmy is a wiseguy press agent whose efforts to promote a meat-packing firm come to naught. Our hero is fired from his job, whereupon his sweetheart Sally steps in, immediately succeeding where Jimmy had failed.
Jane Lee
Bootlegger Ed Carson is sent to prison. His old gang turns from liquor (now legal) to kidnapping. When they nab the son and daughter-in-law of the judge who sent Carson to prison, he is paroled to help in the capture.
Patricia Carter
Based on a Zane Grey story, The Last Trail stars virile cowboy hero George O'Brien in a largely anti-heroic role. Escaping from a posse, the "good bad man" (O'Brien) boards an Eastbound train, where he strikes up a friendship with a genial gangster (J. Carroll Naish). Later on, the cowboy returns to the West as a member of the gangster's gang. He poses as the heir to a vast cattle ranch, never dreaming that he really is the heir. When the truth is revealed, the wayward cowboy switches to the side of the Law, while another of the gangster's flunkeys (Claire Trevor) reveals herself to be an honest newspaperwoman -- and thus a suitable candidate for romance.
Judy Halloway
Adventure ensues as Judy Halloway arrives in Arizona to visit her brother, Tom.
