Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Sport | Entertainment | Talking Point | High Graphics | AudioVideo | Feedback | Help | Noticias | Newyddion | High Graphics | BBC SPORT>>
Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | AudioVideo |
Entertainment Contents: Showbiz | Music | Film | Arts | TV and Radio | New Media | Reviews |

BBC News Online: Entertainment


Sunday, 9 April, 2000, 11:36 GMT 12:36 UK

Key Largo star dies


Claire Trevor
American actress Claire Trevor, who appeared in more than 60 Hollywood films, has died at the age of 90.

Trevor won an Academy Award for her 1948 performance as a drunken, heart-broken former singer in Key Largo alongside Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson.

She was also in John Ford's 1939 classic Stagecoach, playing a frontier prostitute redeemed by John Wayne.

She died at a hospital near her home in Newport Beech, California. No cause of death was given.

A 'rotten' singer

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Trevor earned Oscar nominations for Dead End, a 1937 melodrama in which she played a good girl who grows up to be a prostitute, and for The High and the Mighty, a 1954 aeroplane disaster epic.


Claire Trevor facts
Best actress Oscar in 1948 for Key Largo
Two Oscar nominations in 1937 and 1959
More than 60 films
Three marriages

In her best known role, in Key Largo, Trevor played the mistress of Edward G Robinson's sadistic gangster.

In one scene, he forces her to sing for a drink she badly wants. Trevor struggles through the song only to be refused the drink by Robinson "because you were rotten."

In the 1950s, she appeared in a number of television dramas and won an Emmy Award in 1956 for her performance in Dodsworth.

Her last feature film was Breaking Home Ties in 1987.

A theatre at the University of California is named in Trevor's honour.

A series of marriages

Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger in New York in 1910.

She married film producer Clark Andrews in 1938, but they divorced four years later.

Her second marriage to Cylos William Dunsmoore produced a son, Charles. But this too ended in divorce in 1947.

The next year, Trevor married Milton Bren, another film producer.

In 1978 Charles died in an airliner crash and her last husband, Milton, died from a brain tumour in 1979.

Trevor's funeral service will be held in private, and a memorial service is being planned.


Internet links: Claire Trevor Bren Theatre | Claire Trevor fan site |
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Sport | Entertainment | Talking Point | High Graphics | AudioVideo | Feedback | Help | Noticias | Newyddion | High Graphics | BBC SPORT>>
Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | AudioVideo |
Entertainment Contents: Showbiz | Music | Film | Arts | TV and Radio | New Media | Reviews |

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage | ©