by Ray Hagen
In 1983 she told John Gallagher for Films in Review how that scene came about: “First of all, I had no idea I was going to sing it myself, because I can’t sing. I thought they were going to have a recording and I was going to mouth the words to the recording, and have a singer do it. I wanted the music department to rehearse me and train me in the gestures of a nightclub singer … each day I’d say to John [Huston], ‘When can I go to the music department and rehearse, when are you going to shoot the song?’ ‘Oh, we’ve got lots of time.’ This went on and on and on… So we came back from lunch one day, and he said, ‘I think I’ll shoot this song this afternoon.’ I said ‘What? Where’s the recording? I haven’t heard it.’ He said, ‘You’re going to sing it.’ I said, ‘I can’t!’ …. He stood me up there with the whole cast and the whole crew looking. You think that’s not embarrassing? And offstage is a piano, and they hit one note. Start. [Laughter] No time for anything except pure embarrassment and torture, and that’s what came through. I tried to do it as well as I could. And when we’d done the long shot all the way through, I thought I was finished … He said, ‘All right, now we’ll do the two-shot, and the close-up,’ and the piano would go ‘Bong’ offstage and that was it. Each time I did a different set-up and then they had to blend them all together, you can imagine how many keys I was in.”
She and Dunsmoore had divorced in 1947 and on November 14, 1948, she was married to producer Milton Bren. This one was for keeps. Bren had two teenaged sons, Peter and Donald, from a previous marriage, and Claire helped raise them along with her son Charles. “I didn’t begin my life until I married Milton Bren,” she said in 1999.
In an interview for the April 1949 Motion Picture titled “Change of Heart,” Claire discussed her renewed interest in her film career with Charles Samuels: “I was indifferent, perhaps belligerent, when I first came to Hollywood. I was young, of course, and not very experienced … Working in movies was just something I was doing to keep going until I got the right stage role, the one that would make me a great actress like Helen Hayes … It was an overwhelming obsession with me that Broadway was worthwhile, Hollywood a bad joke. I was not even slightly envious of the girls who each year skyrocketed past me: Rita Hayworth, who played small bits in films in which I was starred; Betty Grable, who was just starting her sensational rise on the same old Fox lot. It’s wonderful that I lasted in pictures at all with that start I made … I’d only been in a couple of Broadway plays, but the stage had me bedazzled, bedizzied and bewitched… That old dream of returning to the stage and never coming back to Hollywood still haunted me, despite the occasional good roles I got… Actually I suppose [the Broadway failure] was the finest thing that could have happened to me… The Broadway mirage is gone, I think, for good.”
In 1949 Claire appeared to rare comic advantage as Brian Donlevy’s addled, breezy secretary in The Lucky Stiff, but Dorothy Lamour got top billing. The following year Claire starred with Fred MacMurray in Borderline, produced by husband Milton Bren and again showing her gift for comedy. It was a brisk, well-played adventure, though no world-beater. For the next three years she appeared in widely assorted roles, always to fine critical notice. The films may not have been top box -office, but her Oscar had extended her screen career and gave her professional reputation a permanent face lift. Her performances remained exceptional and her merit was fully and repeatedly acknowledged.
Speaking to Louis Reid in 1950 about her bad girl image, Claire said: “If I had my choice, I’d rather be a bad girl in a good picture than a good girl in a bad one. I don’t care how I look—brazen, blowzy, brassy—if the role is of the bad ‘un, it’s all to the good. I’ve been all kinds of menaces—young, middle-aged, intermediate-aged, modern, old-fashioned—in big city underworlds and frontier towns. Sometimes I’ve had a heart of gold but more often my heart is only tarnished gilt. The idea is to look tough, live hard, be dangerous … I never knew any women as bad as those I’ve played on the screen. Never have I had the slightest acquaintance with a female dipso such as I depicted in Key Largo.”
Between 1951 and ’53 she did a variety of starring and supporting roles in mostly programmers: standard Trevor duty in a pair of Westerns (Best of the Bad Men and The Stranger Wore a Gun), a sour farmwife harridan (My Man and I), an underworld siren patterned after celebrated mob babe Virginia Hill (Hoodlum Empire) and a former gun moll trying to crack society in a misfired Damon Runyon comedy (Stop, You’re Killing Me). Best of the lot was Hard, Fast and Beautiful, directed by Ida Lupino. Claire was the calculating, overly ambitious mother of tennis champ Sally Forrest, and she imbued the role with a stunning harsh reality.
On December 31, 1953, Claire made her TV debut in a filmed half-hour drama for NBC’s Ford Theatre titled Alias Nora Hale. It was the beginning of a lengthy and extremely well-handled TV career, working irregularly in roles carefully selected.
In 1954 she was seen as May Holst, the overblown, warmhearted broad in The High and the Mighty, Warners’ mega-hit with John Wayne and Robert Stack co-piloting the imperilled, star-filled plane. This was the prototype for every all-star this-plane’s-going-down saga that followed. Despite Claire’s role having been severely truncated, both she and Jan Sterling earned Oscar nominations (Trevor’s third).
The following year she did Lucy Gallant (second fiddle to star Jane Wyman) and Man Without a Star (her final fling in a Western saloon), and in ’56 she won an Emmy as Best Actress in a Single Performance for her role as Fran Dodsworth on the NBC Producers’ Showcase production of Dodsworth, broadcast live on April 30. She co-starred with Fredric March and scored a tremendous personal success. (She had been nominated for a previous Emmy in 1954 for Ladies in Retirement on Lux Video Theatre.) She later called this her favorite of any performance she ever gave.
In 1956, Claire told Kevin Delany: “In television I can do what I can’t do in pictures, which is to play sympathetic, normal roles. Of course, if the part has enough facets, I don’t mind playing the bad girl. Bette Davis played designing woman after another for years, but they were such marvelously interesting people. I’m tapering off in pictures. I think three or four TV shows a year are enough too. As for a TV series, never. Life is too short, and frankly I’m not terribly ambitious.”
She did a small part opposite Spencer Tracy in The Mountain (1956). It starred Tracy and Robert Wagner as exceedingly unlikely mountain-climbing brothers, with Tracy turning to Trevor for some brief affections. She won particularly impressive critical response for her incisive turn in Marjorie Morningstar (1958) as Marjorie’s shrewd Jewish mother, one of her finest performances.
Jack O’Brian wrote in his March 11, 1957, TV column: “Lana Turner is beginning to look like Claire Trevor, which is our notion of growing up gracefully.” Claire was indeed looking effortlessly sensational well into the next decade, while most of her contemporaries were battling the clock all too visibly.
In 1957 the Brens moved from Beverly Hills to Newport Beach, California, and Claire was by now spending more time painting than acting. Long one of the more gifted painting talents of the Hollywood set, she worked constantly at it, mainly doing portraits. “Painting,” she noted, “is a lot cheaper than going to a psychiatrist.”
Her next film was in 1962, the disastrous Two Weeks in Another Town, in which she let fly with one of the nastiest in her gallery of screen witches, once again paired with old friend Edward G. Robinson. A year later she was seen as Richard Beymer’s well-meaning mother in The Stripper, in which she got over-the-title billing for the first time in years. It was also the first film she’d done for 20th Century-Fox since walking out on them 26 years earlier.
In 1964 she was Eddie Mayehoff’s wisecracking take-charge wife in How to Murder Your Wife, a middling Jack Lemmon comedy, and in ’67 she was in the little-seen The Capetown Affair, made in South Africa. This was a remake of 1953’s Pickup on South Street, with Claire in the Thelma Ritter role as a weary, doomed bag-lady.
She wasn’t seen on the big screen again
for 15 years.
In 1968 Claire again took to the boards in a pair of regional tours. She starred with Rock Hudson and Leif Erickson in Charles Laughton’s adaptation of John Brown’s Body and startled everyone by playing the fierce, cigar-smoking title lesbian in The Killing of Sister George.
For the next ten years she devoted herself to painting, charitable causes and enjoying the good life in happy unofficial retirement. Then, in 1978, Claire’s son Charles, 34, was killed in an airplane collision over San Diego, and a year later Milton Bren, her husband of 31 years, died of a brain tumor. Claire was devastated by these twin tragedies within one year. She later told the Los Angeles Times that Bren’s death “was the biggest loss except for our son, who was killed. That was something you never get over. But losing my husband left me without anybody. I mean, I felt completely alone.”
Needing to break away from Newport Beach and her memories there, she moved to a Fifth Avenue apartment in New York in 1981 and gradually entered into a busy social life. The Brens had long been active in charity work with the March of Dimes and Claire chaired the Orange County Arthritis Foundation. She’d lent her name to many charitable causes and by now had limited her public appearances to fundraising events. Now, in the eighties, she became active in furthering AIDS education well before it became widely acceptable to do so.
She returned to the screen (and to Fox) in 1982 for Kiss Me Goodbye, a remake of the 1978 Brazilian hit Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. She played Sally Field’s tart-tongued, poker-playing mother. Actually old enough to be Field’s grandmother, she was still looking improbably youthful and was altogether delightful and convincing. But the picture tanked, to Claire’s disappointment.
In 1984 Claire was among the actresses featured in James Watters’ photo-essay book Return Engagement. “I’m lucky I don’t have to work,” she told Watters, “and while there are still a lot of things for me to do, keeping up my name is not one of them.” Horst’s accompanying unretouched portrait of Claire showed her looking serenely trim and beautiful at 73.
Claire’s final acting role was in an ABC television movie awkwardly titled Norman Rockwell’s Breaking Home Ties, seen on November 27, 1987, playing a lame, middle-aged spinster-schoolteacher.
By the ’90s she had moved back home to Newport Beach and was keeping a low public profile. In 1999 she met the Dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of the Arts, who invited her to come by and visit their theater. Claire took an interest in the program and began doing some off-the-cuff, informal master classes for the students. She didn’t care for the theater’s outdated physical setup so she donated $500,000, enabling them to renovate their 30-year-old playhouse, which they renamed the Claire Trevor Bren Theatre Stage.
It was in the midst of these activities that Claire died at age 90 on April 8, 2000, in a hospital near her Newport Beach home. She’d been hospitalized for respiratory ailments.
It was then announced that she had bequeathed her entire estate to the University of California, Irvine, School of the Arts. Along with additional bequests from the Bren family, the amount totaled $10 million. In her honor it has been renamed the Claire Trevor School of the Arts.
At the formal dedication, her stepson Donald Bren said, “Claire last appeared publicly on this very stage, on a blustery day in January almost three years ago. That’s when a wonderful group of students brought tears to Claire’s eyes with their performance and then she came up on stage and answered their questions about her many years of acting opposite such stars as John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. She stole the show and she stole their hearts. Then she opened her heart and gave a [$500,000] gift to the theater, and I’m thrilled to be able to help students achieve their goals.” He then added, “Claire was a remarkable person in every way.” Bren concluded his speech by presenting the school with Claire’s Oscar and her Emmy.
Now that’s giving back.
1931: The Imperfect Lover (WB-Vitaphone short), The Meal Ticket (WB-Vitaphone short), Angel Cake (WB-Vitaphone short). 1933: Life in the Raw (Fox), The Last Trail (Fox), The Mad Game (Fox), Jimmy and Sally (Fox). 1934: Hold That Girl (Fox), Wild Gold (Fox), Baby Take a Bow (Fox), Elinor Norton (Fox). 1935: Spring Tonic (Fox), Black Sheep (Fox), Dante’s Inferno (Fox), Beauty’s Daughter (Fox). 1936: Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs (MGM short), My Marriage (TCF), The Song and Dance Man (TCF), Human Cargo (TCF), To Mary—With Love (TCF), Star for a Night (TCF), 15 Maiden Lane (TCF), Career Woman (TCF). 1937: Time Out for Romance (TCF), King of Gamblers (Paramount), One Mile from Heaven (TCF), Dead End (UA), Second Honeymoon (TCF), Big Town Girl (TCF). 1938: Walking Down Broadway (TCF), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (WB), Valley of the Giants (WB), Five of a Kind (TCF). 1939: Stagecoach (UA), I Stole a Million (Universal), Allegheny Uprising (RKO). 1940: Dark Command (Republic). 1941: Texas (Columbia), Honky Tonk (MGM), The Adventures of Martin Eden (Columbia). 1942: Crossroads (MGM), Street of Chance (Paramount). 1943: The Desperadoes (Columbia), Good Luck, Mr. Yates (Columbia), The Woman of the Town (UA). 1945: Murder, My Sweet (RKO), Johnny Angel (RKO). 1946: Crack Up (RKO), The Bachelor’s Daughters (UA). 1947: Born to Kill (RKO). 1948: Raw Deal (Eagle Lion), Key Largo (WB), The Velvet Touch (RKO), The Babe Ruth Story (Allied Artists). 1949: The Lucky Stiff (UA). 1950: Borderline (Universal). 1951: Best of the Badmen (RKO), Hard, Fast and Beautiful (RKO). 1952: Hoodlum Empire (Republic), My Man and I (MGM), Stop, You’re Killing Me (WB). 1953: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Columbia). 1954: The High and the Mighty (WB). 1955: Man Without a Star (Universal), Lucy Gallant (Paramount). 1956: The Mountain (Paramount). 1958: Marjorie Morningstar (WB). 1962: Two Weeks in Another Town (MGM). 1963: The Stripper (TCF). 1965: How to Murder Your Wife (UA). 1967: The Capetown Affair (TCF). 1982: Kiss Me Goodbye (TCF). 1987: Norman Rockwell’s Breaking Home Ties (ABC-TV)
Marie Windsor: Face of Evil
by LAURA WAGNER
Her face gave her away: the half-smirk, her shadowy eyes and that look were sure signs that she was up to no good, even if she wasn’t. You somehow suspected her motives might just be tainted. Not an asset for an actress who wants to play traditionally romantic leading roles, but great viewing for her fans who wanted her to be bad, wanted her to gun down the next dope who came along. Marie Windsor was at her best when she was ruthless or just plain tough; she made her roles interesting—heck, she looked interesting—giving them a visceral, raw energy many of them didn’t deserve. Yeah, she couldn’t be trusted, what of it?
She was born Emily Marie Bertelsen on December 11, 1922 to Lane and Etta Bertelsen in Marysvale, Utah. She recalled in interviews that acting was an early passion, attending silent movies with her grandmother (Clara Bow was her favorite) and taking dancing and dramatic lessons, before reaching her teen years. By the time Marie was in junior high she was the captain of the school’s basketball team “because of my height,” which was 5'9".
Marie graduated high school a year early and entered Brigham Young University. She studied art and drama and participated in campus productions. After two years she, along with her family, traveled to New York, where she wanted to study acting with the famed coach Maria Ouspenskaya; she was frustrated to find that Mme. Ouspenskaya had moved to Hollywood.
Back in Marysvale for a spell, Marie was still determined, and windows of opportunities opened for her. “Marysvale somehow got me named Miss Utah,” she laughed, “even though no such competition existed.” What the fictitious title did was act as a stepping stone, as did being named “Miss Covered Wagon Days” and “Miss D. & R. G. Railroad.” Her prize for the latter was 99 dollars in silver, which was spent on luggage for the journey west.
With renewed vigor, the family all drove to Hollywood in 1940 in search of Mme. Ouspenskaya, who, when finally found, agreed to coach the budding actress. Marie said in 1991, “She seemed to like me very much, but was always working on me to deliver more ‘inner energy.’ It’s interesting that after I spent ten summers studying with Stella Adler, I discovered that she was also a student of Ousp
enskaya’s.”
Settling in with her acting lessons, Marie moved to the Hollywood Studio Club, while her parents went back to Utah. At the suggestion of “a royalty buff” at the Studio Club, she also changed her name to Windsor.
She was working at the Mocambo as a cigarette girl when she was spotted by producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. He alerted producer LeRoy Prinz, who gave her a bit in All-American Coed (1941). It led to numerous bits during 1941–43. Notable during this period was the East Side Kids’ Smart Alecks, where she gave Leo Gorcey his first screen kiss, a dubious distinction.
In addition to her brief movie roles and various modeling assignments, Marie was involved with the revue Henry Duffy’s Merry-Go-Rounders in 1943 with Sid Marion; the 13-week show played in Detroit, Buffalo and Washington, DC. In another show, Star Dust, an out-of-town flop, she understudied Gloria Grahame.
Portrait of Marie Windsor, 1950.
Marie busied herself in New York on radio during this period, employed, she estimated, in at least 400 largely uncredited on-air assignments. Her longest-lasting gig was on the soap Our Gal Sunday for nine months. On the show Amanda of Honeymoon Hill, she met bandleader Ted Steele, who would later become her first husband. (They wed in 1946, and it was annulled after eight months.) But it was another Broadway production in 1944 which proved her ticket back to Hollywood.
Follow the Girls was a smash hit musical revue (eventually running two years), set in a serviceman’s canteen. It starred pre–TV Jackie Gleason and Gertrude Niesen, and was drawing crowds mainly because of its vaudeville-flavored skits. Marie was a replacement several months after the show opened in April of 1944. After she was with the show six months, Vladimir Vetlugen offered her an MGM screen test and then a short-term contract.