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Jean Peters

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Jean Peters
Jean Peters in Viva Zapata! (1952)
Birth name	Elizabeth Jean Peters
Born	October 15, 1926 Canton, Ohio
Died	October 13, 2000 Carlsbad, California
Spouse(s)	Stuart W. Cramer III (m.1954) Howard Hughes (1957-1971) Stanley Hough (1971-1990)

Elizabeth Jean Peters (October 15, 1926 – October 13, 2000) was an American actress. Peters grew up in a farming family in Canton, Ohio. Whilst studying for a teaching degree at Ohio University, a friend of Peters entered her photo in the Ohio state beauty contest which Peters won, the prize being a screen test for 20th Century-Fox. Her first film, 1947's Captain from Castile with Tyrone Power was a hit, and Leonard Maltin writes that afterwards Peters spent the new decade playing "sexy spitfires, often in period dramas and Westerns." [1] Director Samuel Fuller chose Peters over Marilyn Monroe for the part of Candy in 1953's Pickup on South Street. He thought Peters had the right blend of sex appeal and the tough-talking, streetwise characteristics he was seeking, and that Monroe was too innocent looking for the role. Peters and Monroe starred together in another 1953 film noir, Niagara.

Jean Peters and Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952)

In 1957, after her divorce from her first husband, Texas oilman Stuart Cramer, Peters married Howard Hughes, shortly before he faded from public view and became an eccentric recluse. She retired from acting during the marriage. In 1971, Peters and Hughes divorced. She agreed to a lifetime alimony payment of $70,000 (USD) annually, adjusted for inflation, and she waived all claims to Hughes' estate. That same year, she married Stanley Hough, an executive with Twentieth-Century Fox.

Jean Peters in the trailer for the film Niagara (1953)

The usually-paranoid Hughes surprised his aides when he did not insist on a confidentiality agreement from Peters as a condition of divorce; aides reported Peters was one of the few people Hughes never disparaged. Peters refused to discuss her life with Hughes, and declined several lucrative offers to do so. She would state only that she had not seen Hughes for several years before their divorce. Peters returned to acting with a few roles on television. She died of leukemia in 2000 in Carlsbad, California, two days before her 74th birthday.