Dorothy Tree - Movie Career

Movie Career

Tree made her motion picture debut playing a department store employee in the Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures silent era romantic comedy It (1927) starring Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno. Tree next played a wife of Bela Lugosi's Dracula (1931); she also played a bride of Dracula in the Spanish language version of the same title, which was shot at night with a different cast using the same sets at Universal.

She married screenwriter and story editor Michael Uris (March 25, 1902–July 17, 1967). They had one son, Joseph M. Uris (born October 25, 1943).

Tree attracted attention as a feminine menace on the screen as the hairdresser-spy, Hilda Kleinhauer, in the Warner Bros. drama Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) starring Edward G. Robinson, which won the National Board of Review Award for Best Film – English Language. Her performance immediately won her the role as Reni Vonich, head of a spy ring attempting to steal the latest in technology, in Paramount's sci-fi drama Television Spy (1939). She was signed by RKO to portray the important role as Elizabeth Edwards, Mary Todd's sister, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) starring Raymond Massey.

She portrayed Martha Rockne in the Warners biopic Knute Rockne, All American, the mother of the famous football coach played by Pat O'Brien. The movie also stars Ronald Reagan and Gale Page. In MGM's film noir crime/drama The Asphalt Jungle Tree played May Emmerich, a bedridden woman who is the very ingenuous and frustrated wife of Alonzo Emmerich (played by Louis Calhern), a crooked lawyer and double-crosser who, although he truly loves May, is having an adulterous affair with the character played by Marilyn Monroe.

Tree also appeared as Aunt Martha Dale in a teleplay of the live television anthology series The Silver Theatre (1950), which was titled Minor Incident. Her last role on the theater screen was as Marie Elsner in Columbia's crime/drama The Family Secret (1951) starring John Derek and Lee J. Cobb.