Claire Trevor - Academy Award - Irvine, CA
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DopeyDuck
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Nicknamed the "Queen of Film Noir" because of her many appearances in bad girl roles in film noir and other black-and-white thrillers, Claire Trevor won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in "Key Largo" in 1948.
Waymark Code: WM7FH4
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 10/19/2009
Views: 27
From the Internet Movie Database
"In the 1940s Trevor began appearing in the genre that brought her to true stardom, known as "film noir". She started in a big way as killer Ruth Dillon in Street of Chance (1942) with Burgess Meredith. She was equally convincing as the more complex but nonetheless two-faced Mrs. Grayle in the Philip Marlowe vehicle Murder, My Sweet (1944). However, she was something very different and quite extraordinary as washed-up, boozy nightclub singer Gaye Dawn in _Key Largo (1948), for which she won an Academy Award, again working with Bogart and Robinson. The film hangs on her wrenching performance during a pathetic rendition of the torch song "Moanin' Low", sung in humiliation to gain a desperately wanted drink. There were more quality movies and an additional Academy nomination (The High and the Mighty (1954)) into the 1950s, but Trevor was also doing stage and television. She was enthusiastic about live TV and appeared on several famous shows by the mid-1950s. She won an Emmy for Best Live Television Performance by an Actress as the flighty wife of Fredric March in "Dodsworth" (1956) on NBC's "Producers' Showcase" (1954). She alternated her career among film, stage and TV roles. As she aged she easily transitioned into "distinguished matron" and mother roles, one of her most unusual ones being the murderous Ma Barker in an episode of the gun-blasting "The Untouchables" (1959). Her final film role was as Sally Field's mother in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982).
Trevor and her third husband, producer Milton H. Bren, had long been residents of tony Newport Beach, CA, to which they returned in 1987 when Trevor finally retired from screen work. However, she did maintain an active interest in stage work, and became associated with The School of Arts at the University of California, Irvine. She and her husband contributed some $10 million to further its development for the visual and performing arts (that included three endowed professorships). After her passing in April 2000 at 91 years old, the University renamed the school The Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Her presence on the UCI campus is in more than spirit alone-visibly so-her Oscar for "Key Largo" stands in an exterior glass window on view in the school's Arts Plaza complex."
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