WEIRDLAND: Classic and modern femme-fatales

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Classic and modern femme-fatales

Graham Greene wrote about Humphrey Bogart's performance in "Dead End" (1937): "Bogart pauses several times in his talk, as if sinking into the despair of his character. And in two memorable scenes sentimentality turns savage in him. This is the finest performance Bogart has ever given -the ruthless sentimentalist who has melodramatized himself from the start up against the truth-

his girl is diseased and on the streets".

Claire Trevor (1910–2000) - Nickname: The Queen of Film Noir

"I don't know what they call Hollywood anymore. The whole meaning of the town has changed" - Claire Trevor quote.

"Claire Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger on March 8, 1910, in Brooklyn, New York.

During her career, which spanned sixty films, she earned the moniker “Queen of Film Noir."

She played a plethora of “bad girl” roles, but earned three Oscar nominations: “Dead End” (1937, which also featured Humphrey Bogart and marked the debut of The Dead End Kids); “The High and the Mighty” (1954)

and won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal as the drunken girlfriend of an abusive gangster (Edward G. Robinson), in “Key Largo” (1948).

Her other films include, “Murder, My Sweet” (1944) where Trevor played Velma, the missing girlfriend of a gangster. Dick Powell played the lead as detective Philip Marlowe. In 1947 she starred in “Born To Kill” and in 1948 she made three films--“Raw Deal” playing a gun moll who helps her gangster boyfriend escape from prison; “The Velvet Touch”, where she was cast as an actress accused of murdering her husband; and then she played against type in “The Babe Ruth Story” (1948). The former two films are considered some of the finest examples of the Noir genre.

Trevor also won an Emmy (1956) for her performance in “Dodsworth”, co-starring with Fredric March. She died April 8, 2000". Source: hollywoodgoldenyears.blogspot.com

"Trevor often played the hard-boiled blonde, and every conceivable type of “bad girl” role. After attending American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late ’20s in stock.

From 1933 through 1938 Trevor starred in twenty nine films, often having either the lead role or the role of heroine. In 1937 she starred with Humphrey Bogart in Dead End, which would lead to her being nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

She was equally convincing as the more complex, but nonetheless two-faced, Mrs. Grayle in the Philip Marlowe vehicle Murder, My Sweet (1944).

But she was something very different and extraordinary as the washed up, boozy nightclub singer Gaye Dawn in her Oscar-winning performance for Best Actress opposite a great cast headed by Bogart and Robinson, as exiled gangster kingpin Johnny Rocco, in Key Largo (1948).

The movie hangs on her wrenching performance of a pathetic rendition of torch song “Moanin’ Low” sung in humiliation to gain a desperately wanted drink" . Source: oscarataglance.wordpress.com

Humphrey Bogart and Mayo Methot in their wedding day, on 21st August, 1938

Mayo Methot (Bogart's third wife) inspired the intoxicated Gaye Dawn singing in "Key Largo" (Claire Trevor's scene which won her an Oscar): During a night in Italy with the USO supporting the American troops, Methot insisted on performing for the soldiers as tough she was still on her Broadway days. The performance was so out of tune and embarrassing that John Huston and Bogart remembered it years later and recreated this scene in "Key Largo" (1948) on the incident.