Susan Peters

War-era MGM had a promising star in Susan Peters, whose luminous presence and creative sensitivity suggested a long and successful career in Hollywood. Born Suzanne Carnahan in Spokane, Washington, on July 3, 1921, she was the eldest of two children. Her father, Robert, a construction engineer, died in an automobile accident in 1928, after which the family moved to Los Angeles to live with Susan's grandmother. She attended various schools, excelling in athletics and studying drama during her senior year at Hollywood High School, where she was noticed by a talent scout. After graduating, she secured an agent and enrolled at Max Reinhardt's School of Dramatic Arts. While performing in a showcase, she was spotted by a Warner Bros. casting agent, tested, and signed to the studio in 1940.

Making her debut as an extra in Susan and God (1940), she found limited opportunities and grew frustrated with the minor roles offered. Billed as Suzanne Carnahan—refusing the studio's proposed stage name of Sharon O'Keefe—she was often given little to do in early films. She tested for a lead in Kings Row (1942) but lost out to Betty Field. Her first significant role came in The Big Shot (1942), a Humphrey Bogart film in which she was fourth-billed and played the second female lead. After being dropped by Warners, MGM acquired her contract and gave her the stage name Susan Peters. She co-starred in Tish (1942), a Marjorie Main film, where she met actor Richard Quine, who played her husband in the movie. The couple also appeared together in Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942) and married in November 1943.

Susan earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the teenage stepdaughter and love interest in Random Harvest (1942), opposite Ronald Colman. Her potential was quickly recognized, and she continued with performances in films such as the WWII spy tale Assignment in Brittany (1943), the comedy Young Ideas (1943), and the romantic war drama Song of Russia (1944), in which she played Nadya, a young Soviet pianist who falls for Robert Taylor. For these roles, she was named "Star of Tomorrow" alongside Van Johnson and others.

Tragedy struck over a year after her wedding. During a duck-hunting trip in the San Diego area on New Year's Day 1945 with her husband and friends, a hunting rifle accidentally discharged when Susan attempted to retrieve it. The bullet lodged in her spine, leaving her permanently paralyzed from the waist down. MGM covered her medical expenses but eventually had to terminate her contract. Susan continued working in radio and, in 1946, she and Richard adopted a son, Timothy Richard. Two years later, they divorced, reportedly because Susan felt she was a burden.

Appearing as a demure soldier's wife in Keep Your Powder Dry (1945)—filmed before but released after her accident—Susan made a film "comeback" with The Sign of the Ram (1948), a melodrama in which she played an embittered, manipulative, wheelchair-bound woman. The film was not well received. She also performed on stage, touring in "The Glass Menagerie," where she played the crippled daughter Laura from a wheelchair (with permission from Tennessee Williams), and in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" opposite Tom Poston, in which she portrayed poet and chronic invalid Elizabeth Barrett Browning from a couch.

In March 1951, she appeared in the TV series Miss Susan (1951), playing an Ironside-like lawyer, but the show lasted less than one season, ending in December 1951. Afterward, the increasingly frail actress, who was in constant pain, withdrew from public life. Suffering from depression, kidney problems, and pneumonia, she eventually lost her will to live and died on October 23, 1952, at the age of 31, from kidney failure and starvation, caused by anorexia nervosa.