dual personalities

Tag: Claire Trevor

March 8, 2023

Wednesday mish mosh

by chuckofish

Today we remember actress Claire Trevor, who was born on this day in 1910.

Claire wasn’t your standard Hollywood beauty, and maybe because of that, she always brought something special to each of her roles. She appeared in 65 feature films from 1933 to 1982, winning an Oscar for her supporting role in Key Largo (1948) as a washed-up lounge singer. She received nominations for her roles in The High and the Mighty (1954) and Dead End (1938) and top billing ahead of John Wayne in Stagecoach (1939). Other stand-out performances include: Alleghany Uprising (1938), Murder My Sweet (1944), and hold the phone, she appeared on an episode of Murder She Wrote in 1987!

All of these movies are well worth watching tonight. We might try to find Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) which also stars Cyd Charisse who shared March 8th as her birthday.

Or maybe not. I think I’ll stick with one of my faves.

In other news, this sounds like a great new album. You can scroll down in the link and listen to Rosanne Cash’s rendition of Doc Watson’s classic “I am a Pilgrim”.

I am a pilgrim and a stranger 
Traveling through this wearisome land 
And I've got a home in that yonder city, good Lord 
And it's not, not made by hand
--Roger Miller

So have a good day! Watch a Claire Trevor movie. Listen to some good music. Check out the daffodils which are insane this year–at least in my neck of the woods. And, hey, are the Forsythia bushes starting to pop?

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August 8, 2017

“Nothing for nothing, kid.”

by chuckofish

The other night I watched Dead End (1937) which I had not seen in years. I was quite struck by it. Based on the Sidney Kingsley play, the screenplay is by Lillian Hellman and it is directed by William Wyler. dead-end.jpgIt stars Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney and Humphrey Bogart, who are all first-rate, especially Bogart who is remarkably vulnerable as the vicious gangster whose heart is broken twice in one day.

Furthermore, the character actors really impressed me. Marjorie Main (Bogart’s mother) and Claire Trevor (Bogart’s former girlfriend)

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each have one scene and they steal them impressively. The young boys in the movie are all good too–they must have impressed someone, as they got their own movie franchise–the Dead End Kids–as a result.

It’s a simple story about haves and have-nots, which takes place in an East Side slum, overlooked by the high-rise apartments of the rich.  Although nobody is preaching anything, we all get the point. It is realistic and gritty and violent–but the grit and the violence are mostly inferred, suggested…

Hugh “Baby Face”: Why didn’t you get a job?

Francey: They don’t grow on trees.

Hugh “Baby Face”: Why didn’t you starve first?

Francey: Why didn’t YOU?

A strong screenplay, a great director and a terrific cast equals a classic movie that never becomes dated, because the feelings that are evoked are still the same eighty years later.

By the way, today is Sylvia Sidney’s birthday, so why not toast her, and, if you have the chance, watch this fine film!

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November 1, 2012

What to watch

by chuckofish

Ralphie: Hey Curly, what all happens in a hurricane?
Curly: The wind blows so hard the ocean gets up on its hind legs and walks right across the land.
Toots: And singin’ this song: Rain rain, go away, little Ralphie wants to play.

I don’t know about you, but all this non-stop weather talk has put me in the mood for Key Largo (1948).

It is a humdinger of a good movie, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, the screenplay written by Richard Brooks and John Huston. You just can’t do much better than that. It is a classic Warner Brothers production of the 1940s, featuring some of its greatest stars: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor (in her Academy Award-winning performance), and a host of character actors. The music is by Max Steiner. The full Warner Brothers treatment.

(On a personal note: I have a fondness for Warner Brothers movies, because my mother did also. When she was growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts she had a friend whose brother went to Worcester Academy where there was the Lewis J. Warner ’28 Memorial Theater. Built in 1932, it was a gift from Warner Brothers Studio President Harry Warner, who donated the building to honor the memory of his only son. Lewis died within three years of graduating from the academy. They showed Warner Brothers movies there on Saturdays and Mary would go there with her friend to see all her favorites: Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart et al.)

Key Largo tells the story of Frank McCloud, disillusioned WWII veteran, who visits the hotel of his deceased friend’s father in the Florida Keys and falls in love with the man’s widow. When mobster Johnny Rocco arrives on the scene with his crew of henchmen just as a hurricane bears down on them, drama ensues.

I think it is my favorite Humphrey Bogart movie (except for The Petrified Forest, of course). And Claire Trevor was never better (even in Stagecoach where she was also terrific.).

What does a girl have to do for a drink around here?

Her Academy-Award winning big scene is a classic. You can imagine a lesser actress really over-playing it. She gets it just right.

I wish this clip included what happens after she sings, because it’s the best. The timing is perfect: Bogart-Robinson-Bogart. Thank you. Hats off to the director, John Huston, as well.

The special effects are not great, but who cares? You get the idea just fine. It was adapted from a play, so it has that stage-y quality. But I don’t mind. And I don’t mind the flag-waving aspects either. Not at all. They’re kind of refreshing.

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