CO-WORKERS PAY TRIBUTE TO TREVOR

One of the great moments in movie history occurs in John Huston’s “Key Largo” (1948), when sadistic gangster Edward G. Robinson forces his alcoholic mistress, an ex-nightclub singer, played by Claire Trevor, to croak out “Moanin’ Low” in return for the drink she craves so badly.

Gamely pulling herself together, Trevor describes how she used to look and how she came on with “no lights, just a baby spot.” She manages to make it through the song only to be refused the drink by Robinson “because you were rotten.” The sense of humiliation is heartbreaking and it won Trevor a best supporting actress Oscar.

Inevitably, a clip of that unforgettable scene was included in the American Cinema Awards Foundation’s “An Evening for Claire Trevor” Thursday night at the Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills that attracted many of Trevor’s contemporaries and co-workers.

Roles including the frontier prostitute redeemed by a gallant John Wayne in “Stagecoach” and the worn streetwalker in “Dead End” have created for Trevor an enduring image of the hard-bitten but vulnerable outcast, distinguished by that trademark catch in her voice. However, the tribute’s few but aptly selected clips served as a reminder of her enduring range, versatility and unpretentious professionalism.

In Vincente Minnelli’s “Two Weeks in Another Town,” again teamed with Robinson, she’s his shrilly, enraged wife. In Franklin Schaffner’s “The Stripper” (which had Joanne Woodward in the title role), she’s a drab, small-town widow, so parsimonious she can’t accept her son’s gift of a wristwatch.

For Thursday’s full-length feature presentation, Trevor selected a fine but neglected 1941 Western, “Texas,” in which she was leading lady to William Holden and Glenn Ford. Her friend Ruth Warrick told the audience that Trevor “picked it for the scenery” and because “it was fun to make.”

Directed by George Marshall with an exceptional script by Horace McCoy (author of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”), Lewis Meltzer and Michael Blankfort, “Texas” is an ever-darkening comedy in which Holden and Ford (both looking very boyish) are penniless ex-Confederate soldiers who gradually wind up on different sides of the law. Trevor is the spunky rancher’s daughter with whom they both fall in love. She looks lovely in what is a small, appealing but scarcely demanding part, yet the choice of the film seemed in keeping with Trevor’s reputation as a modest, even shy woman.

Among those introduced from the audience by the evening’s hostess, Mary Hart of “Entertainment Tonight,” were Sally Blane, Trevor’s co-star in “Walking Down Broadway” (1938); Joseph Cotten; Glenn Ford; Signe Hasso; Ruby Keeler; Francis Lederer; Anna Lee; Patricia Medina; Terry Moore; Margaret O’Brien; Lawrence Tierney, with whom Trevor made “Born to Kill” (1947), and producer David Wolper. Also in attendance was restaurateur Harry Lewis, who played one of Edward G. Robinson’s thugs in “Key Largo.”

When Trevor, elegant in tiered black lace, came to the stage, she said simply that she “never looked back” but that the evening had given her a sense of accomplishment. She spoke of the inevitable losses that come with the passing of time but added, in reference to friends and family, that “some things only improve with age.”