Actress keeps her trust

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33094, 8 December 1972, Page 5

Actress keeps her trust

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) I HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 7. Jean Peters, aged 45, the former wife of the billionaire recluse, Mr Howard Hughes, will answer no questions on her 13-year marriage to Mr Hughes. Looking slim, virtually unlined, and with the regular oval face and pert nose which carried her to stardom in 1946, Miss Peters has just returned to acting, on television. “My life with Howard Hughes was, and shall remain, a matter on which I shall have no comment. I’m sorry,” she told her first press conference.

I Miss Peters was asked if she had a gentleman’s agreement with Mr Hughes not to talk, after their divorce in Nevada last year, and why she felt people connected with the recluse all refused to talk about him. “I would assume that it is because anyone who has known Mr Hughes and likes him is aware of the fact that he doesn’t seek publicity.” “Is it out of respect for him?” she was asked. “Yes,” she said. After their secret marriage in Nevada, in 1957, Miss Peters appeared to disappear from circulation, too, but she said that she had continued to lead a normal life, visiting the theatre regularly and appearing often in public. A “HOUSEWIFE” “I was around, you just didn’t recognise me.” She said she had managed this by always acting like a housewife instead of an actress. “Actresses get out of a car in a certain way as if they expect to be photographed. That’s how they get recognised.” She said that as part of a university course she has been doing since her divorce from Mr Hughes, she even went on a door-to-door survey asking questions about a Los Angeles mayoral race and was recognised only by one person, an actor. She introduced herself as Elizabeth Peters, her real name.

Last August, Miss Peters married Stanley Hough, 52, who helped launch her to stardom as an assistant director in her best known film, “Captain from Castile,” with Tyrone Power in 1947.