Jean Elizabeth Peters was a bright star in Hollywood during her relatively brief tenure, which spanned seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox from 1947 to 1954. Born in Canton, Ohio, in October 1926, she was raised by her mother, who owned a tourist camp, after her father's death when Jean was just ten years old. Jean received her tertiary education at Ohio State University, graduating with a diploma that qualified her as an English teacher.
However, her plans were altered when she won a campus popularity contest, which came with a trip to Hollywood and a screen test. This led to her being offered a seven-year contract at 20th Century-Fox with a starting salary of $150 a week. She made her film debut in Captain from Castile (1947) opposite Tyrone Power, and caught the attention of Howard Hughes.
Jean discreetly dated Hughes for the remainder of the decade and continued to live an unpretentious lifestyle, rarely seen in public and eschewing the Hollywood nightlife and parties. She and her mother lived in a small bungalow in Bel-Air, paid for by Hughes. After relative success in her second feature, Deep Waters (1948),she became increasingly dissatisfied with the prissy roles she was assigned, and her contract was terminated.
Jean returned to farm life in Ohio, but was back in New York in 1951 to be screen-tested by Elia Kazan for the epic biopic Viva Zapata! (1952). Fox wisely used Jean for similarly unglamorous outdoor roles, including Anne of the Indies (1951),Lure of the Wilderness (1952),Pickup on South Street (1953),Apache (1954),and Niagara (1953).
As a major star, she was cast in the prestigious film noir Niagra (1953) opposite Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe, and the Spencer Tracy western Broken Lance (1954). Under a new contract with Fox, Jean was now no longer in a position to refuse an assignment and, though basically unhappy with her part in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954),the picture proved to be one of her most popular pictures to date.
Her next film, A Man Called Peter (1955),was to be her swan song. Following a 33-day marriage to a Texan oilman that ended in a whirlwind divorce, Jean finally married Howard Hughes in a secret ceremony and left public life for the next 13 years. She never gave interviews and retreated to an isolated hilltop mansion above the Santa Monica Mountains.
When Jean's marriage to Hughes ended in June 1971, the actress settled for the relatively modest sum of $70,000 a year and happily waived any further claims on the estate. That same year she got married for the third time, to 20th Century-Fox vice-president Stan Hough. Her screen career was briefly resuscitated when she was cast in the miniseries Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976) and she was last seen in an episode of Murder, She Wrote (1984).
Jean devoted her final years to charitable causes and never spoke in public about her years with Howard Hughes.
