Susan Peters

Stars

Actress Susan Peters' promising motion-picture career was virtually ended by a hunting accident in 1945 that left her paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

The Spokane, Wash., native was a graduate of Hollywood High School where she was a member of the school's drama class. She was named by a Hollywood trade publication poll as one of the "Stars of Tomorrow," but injured her spinal cord later that year when she and her husband, director-producer Richard Quine, were duck hunting northeast of San Diego. She was retrieving a rifle from under a bush when it discharged, sending a bullet through her abdomen and lodging in her spine.

After a long hospitalization she resumed her acting career at Columbia Pictures, playing the role of an invalid in 1947. Doctors had told her she would never walk again, but she later made a number of films, appeared on the stage in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," on a nationwide tour and on radio and television shows.

She adopted a son, Timothy, with her then-husband Quine in 1946.

— Los Angeles Times Oct. 24, 1952 and Oct. 25, 1952