The star Susan Peters faded at 31: the tragic fate and suicide of the Hollywood diva
'16.05.2020'
Source: Yandex.Zen
She voluntarily passed away at the age of 31, she just stopped taking food. What prompted Susan Peters, one of the most beautiful and promising Hollywood actresses, to commit suicide - says Oksana Zhdanova on Yandex Zen.
Susan Peters (nee Carnahan) was born in 1921 in the small American town of Spokane, Washington. When the future actress was only seven years old, her father, who worked as a construction engineer, died in a car accident. Shortly after this sad event, her mother moved little Susan to Los Angeles, where her French grandmother lived.
After graduating from high school, Susan began taking acting lessons from renowned Austrian director Max Reinhardt. She was very quickly noticed in Hollywood and began to offer roles - at first insignificant, and then larger and larger.
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The actress made a real breakthrough in her career in 1942, appearing in the film "Accidental Harvest" ("The Fruits of Accident"). A role in this film earned Peters an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
A notable role for the actress was that of the Hollywood director-emigrant Grigory Ratov in the film "Song of Russia".
Very soon, the MGM film studio will name Susan Peters among its top ten actresses, along with Katherine Hepburn and Hedy Lamarr.
On November 7, 1943, Susan will marry actor Richard Quine.
On January 1, 1945, Peters and her husband Richard, together with a cousin and his wife, went on a duck hunt in an area near San Diego. During this fateful trip for the actress, she accidentally pulled the trigger of a loaded rifle and shot herself in the stomach. Despite the fact that she was rushed to the hospital and urgently operated, she was difficult to help. A bullet damaged the spinal cord, immobilizing a woman below the waist. So from the age of 24 and for the rest of her life, Susan was confined to a wheelchair. Susan's mother was with her daughter all the time during these difficult days for her. But the mother’s heart could not stand it and she died nine months after the shot fired by her daughter.
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After leaving the hospital, Susan decided, as far as possible, to continue to play in the movie. She wanted to depend on her family as little as possible and mastered driving a car specially converted taking into account its limited capabilities.
MGM continued to pay Peters $ 100 as a weekly salary and reimbursement of medical expenses, but offered the actress exclusively the role of the disabled. Then Susan said she did not want to sell her disability, and did not see in her position any advantages for getting roles in the movies.
In 1947, the actress will nevertheless agree to take part in the film "The Sign of the Aries", which went, among other things, in the domestic box office. But the film was coolly received by film critics and audiences: this once again confirmed Peters in the opinion that work in cinema was lost to her.
Having terminated the contract with the film studio, the actress began to work more on radio and in the theater. She played the stage role of Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' production of The Glass Menagerie. The play was slightly modified under the supervision of the author to allow Peters to play her role in a wheelchair. At the premiere of the play, the audience greeted the actress standing up, with a storm of applause.
In 1951, Peters began to lead his program on television, which was not an audience success. Perhaps the audience through the screen felt the psychological state of the actress, who was nothing but sympathy, could not cause them. The fact is that after a divorce from her first husband, the actress suffered from clinical depression. Their jointly adopted son remained with their first husband.
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Having dissolved the marriage, the actress met with Robert Clark, a military colonel, for several months, and they announced their engagement. However, Clark soon broke the engagement, which plunged Susan into an even deeper depression. Her health began to deteriorate rapidly. She moves to the ranch to her brother, in the hope that a change of place will help her. But due to her low mobility, she will soon need a skin transplant, which will be performed in 1952.
In August 1952, Susan Peters will tell her doctor: “I'm terribly tired. I think it would be better if I really died. "
Susan has lost interest and will to live.
For the next two months, Susan stopped eating and then gave up liquids, which led to her death on October 23, 1952. Film critic John Charles believed that what happened to Susan was "one of the worst tragedies to affect the Hollywood acting community in the 1940s."
For her contribution to cinema, Peters was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The original column is published in the blog of Oksana Zhdanova on Yandex Zen
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