John Trent

Biography

Darkly handsome John Trent, an aviator-turned-actor-turned aviator, is best know for the "Tailspin Tommy" adventure movies back in the 1930s. While flying was a natural for him, acting was not and the actor eventually turned his back on his Hollywood career. Born LaVerne Browne on December 5, 1906, in Orange, California, his first focus was in the legal field. Attending the University of Southern California (USC), he switched career aspirations only after completing his law studies and decided to attend the Hancock School of Aeronautics and flying school. He found steady work as a commercial pilot for TWA. As his story goes, the good-looking pilot was noticed by a Paramount executive, who happened to be a passenger on one of Trent's DC-2 flights, and Trent was offered a screen test. Heading for Los Angeles, Trent did the screen test, was put on contract, and given the moniker "John Trent," although there was another actor named John Trent at the time who appeared unbilled in a number of early 1930s films. There was one stipulation he made with TWA before signing with Paramount...that the airline company would put him on reserve in case things didn't work out. They agreed. With no training and few natural instincts in the art of performing, Trent started off slowly in bit parts. As his visibility grew, he still remained pretty much overlooked in most of the second lead or supporting "B" movie roles presented to him at the time -- Badge of Honor (1934), A Doctor's Diary (1937), John Meade's Woman (1937), The Great Gambini (1937) and Blossoms on Broadway (1937). Paramount cast him opposite Ann Dvorak in the comedy She's No Lady (1937) but he proved to be a rather wooden leading man. Monogram Pictures wisely gave him the green light to star in four films based on the comic strip aviator "Tailspin Tommy," which would co-star Marjorie Reynolds as girlfriend Betty Lou and Milburn Stone as best buddy Skeeter, both actors later finding better notice on 1950's TV. Trent was a natural for the part of the obsessed youthful pilot who became the focus of a popular comic strip years back during the 'Charles Lindbergh' craze of the late 1920s. The four films Trent starred in for Monogram were: Mystery Plane (1939), Stunt Pilot (1939), Sky Patrol (1939) and Danger Flight (1939). Still his wooden performances in other films sealed his fate and, after two more movie roles, went behind the scenes as a flight instructor in Monogram's Wolf Call (1939) and in Paramount's I Wanted Wings (1941) (also appearing in the latter in support of Ray Milland and William Holden), and returned to "civilian" life as LaVerne Browne. Trent went back to doing what he did best, finding a job as a test pilot and as a flight manager in the flight-test division of Douglas Aircraft in the Southern California area. Married to wife Marian since 1933, they had one daughter, Barbara. The 59-year-old Trent died on May 12, 1966, of cancer in a Torrance, California hospital.