Arthur Frederic St. Claire Evens (born July 20, 1899, New York, died October 18, 1950, Los Angeles, age 51) was a screenwriter who wrote the script for the Frank Buck adventure thriller ''

Tiger Fangs ''Tiger Fangs'' is a 1943 American adventure/thriller film directed by Sam Newfield and starring Frank Buck and June Duprez. It was distributed Producers Releasing Corporation. The film's sets were designed by the art director Paul Palmentola. P ...

''.

Early years

Arthur Frederic St. Claire Evens was the only child of Edward and Louise Evens. On the 1920 US census Edward Evens listed his occupation as investigator for the US Government. Arthur Evens served in the US Army overseas during World War I, Jan 1918 - March 1919.

Wife's Suicide

Arthur Evens was in the headlines, June 1927, when his wife of 3 months, Helen St. Claire, an actress, age 22, died in her bathroom, 2235 N. Cahuenga Boulevard, after a marital spat by swallowing a bottle of antiseptic lotion. Arthur told the police of a lovers’ quarrel and declared that their lives had been unhappy due to parental enmity (in particular, on the part of the wife’s father, Albert T. Daniels). Helen was buried in New York. In February 1928, Helen's parents supplied new information to police about Helen's death, but in April, a coroner's jury ruled that Helen ended her own life. Arthur thereupon married Iris Ashton Badger, a 29-year-old actress with whom he had been living for months. At the same time, he was convicted of vagrancy and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

Screenplays

Arthur Evens, who used the name ''Arthur St. Claire'', wrote scenarios in Hollywood from the 1920s until the late 1940s. He recycled some of the events of his wife's suicide in fictional form in his screenplay, ''

Delinquent Daughters ''Delinquent Daughters'', or ''Accent on Crime'', is a 1944 American drama film directed by Albert Herman and starring June Carlson, Fifi D'Orsay and Margia Dean. An exploitation film, it is about a police investigation into the suicide death of ...

'' (1944), the story of how a town is shocked when a high school girl commits suicide. Many of St. Claire’s screenplays were

B-movies A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double featur ...

for

Producers Releasing Corporation Producers Releasing Corporation was the smallest and least prestigious of the Hollywood film studios of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoest ...

. He is best remembered today for writing ''

'', a candidate for the national film registry.

Selected filmography

* ''

Secrets of a Model ''Secrets of a Model'' is a 1940 American drama film directed by Sam Newfield and starring Cheryl Walker, Harold Daniels and Phyllis Barry. It was made as an independent exploitation film on Poverty Row.Pitts p.196 Synopsis In order to raise mon ...

'' (1940) * ''

Sweethearts of the U.S.A. ''Sweethearts of the U.S.A.'' is a 1944 American musical comedy film directed by Lewis D. Collins and starring Una Merkel, Harry Parke, and Donald Novis.Taylor & Jackson p.276 In Britain, it was released under the alternative title of ''Sweetheart ...

'' (1944) * ''

Philo Vance's Gamble ''Philo Vance's Gamble'' is a 1947 American mystery film directed by Basil Wrangell and starring Alan Curtis, Vivian Austin and Tala Birell. It was the first of three films featuring the detective Philo Vance made by the Producers Releasing Corpo ...

'' (1947)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:St Claire, Arthur 1899 births 1950 deaths American male screenwriters Screenwriters from New York City 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American screenwriters