Claire Trevor

Claire Trevor (born Claire Wemlinger on March 8, 1910, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York City; died April 8, 2000) was an American actress whose career encompassed stage, film, radio, and television across more than seven decades. The only child of Noel Wemlinger, a Fifth Avenue merchant tailor of French birth and German ancestry, and his Irish-born wife Benjamina, Trevor grew up in New York City before her family relocated to Larchmont, New York in 1923.

After finishing high school, Trevor pursued training through six months of art classes at Columbia University followed by six months at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her first stage appearance in the summer of 1929 with a repertory company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and subsequently performed in summer stock theatre and appeared in a series of Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone short films. Her Broadway career began in 1932, when she took the female lead in Whistling in the Dark, and she continued to appear on Broadway through 1947, with additional credits including The Party's Over and The Big Two.

Trevor made her feature film debut in Jimmy and Sally in 1933, stepping into a role originally intended for Sally Eilers. Between 1933 and 1938 she appeared in 29 films, frequently in lead or heroine roles. Her performance as the second lead in Dead End (1937), alongside top-billed Sylvia Sidney and Humphrey Bogart, earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received top billing over John Wayne in the Western Stagecoach (1939). Further notable film work during this period included Murder, My Sweet (1944) opposite Dick Powell and Born to Kill (1947) with Lawrence Tierney.

Her most celebrated screen performance came in Key Largo (1948), in which she portrayed Gaye Dawn, an alcoholic nightclub singer and gangster's moll, a role that won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received her third and final Oscar nomination for The High and the Mighty (1954). In 1957, she won an Emmy Award for her performance in the Producers' Showcase episode "Dodsworth." Trevor appeared in 65 feature films in total, with her final film role coming in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), in which she played the mother of Sally Field's character, and her last television appearance in the 1987 television film Norman Rockwell's Breaking Home Ties. She made a guest appearance at the 70th Academy Awards in 1998.

Alongside her film work, Trevor maintained an active radio career. From 1937 to 1940 she appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the radio series Big Town, and in the early 1940s she was a regular on The Old Gold Don Ameche Show on the NBC Red Radio Network, performing in plays written by Mark Hellinger.

Trevor married Clark Andrews, the director of her radio show, in 1938; the marriage ended in divorce four years later. In 1943 she married Navy Lieutenant Cylos William Dunsmore, with whom she had a son, her only child. That marriage also ended in divorce, in 1947. The following year she married film producer Milton Bren, who had two sons from a prior marriage, and the couple settled in Newport Beach, California. In 1978, Trevor's son was killed in the crash of PSA Flight 182, and Milton Bren died of a brain tumor the following year. In the aftermath of those losses, Trevor returned to Manhattan for a period, living in a Fifth Avenue apartment before eventually resettling in California. She died on April 8, 2000, at a hospital in Newport Beach at the age of 90.

Trevor has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard. The Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine, was named in her honor, and her Academy Award and Emmy statuettes are displayed in the Arts Plaza adjacent to the Claire Trevor Theatre on that campus.