Claire Maynard

Claire's personal life included a brief romance with writer Jack Kirkland, who was the ex-husband of Nancy Carroll. She was cast in a leading role in a film called Under The Circumstances, but the movie was never made. Depressed over her failing career, she attempted suicide by swallowing iodine. At the age of twenty-one, she moved back to New York City in 1933 and began acting in the theater. In 1936, she landed a small part in the play Bright Honor. She married, but the brief union ended in divorce.

After her mother Florence died in 1938, Claire fell into a deep depression and attempted suicide a second time. She would often spend hours at her mother's grave. Tragically, on July 19, 1941, she killed herself by turning on the gas in her apartment; she was only twenty-nine years old. Three notes were found near her body, including one for her father that read, "Daddy, My sweetheart, Always my sweetheart." Her friends said she ended her life because her heart could not ache any longer. She was buried next to her mother at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York. She was straight.