Actor Marsha Hunt arrives for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association luncheon in Beverly Hills, California, on August 13, 2013. Hunt, one of the last surviving actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age, in 1930 and 1940, passed away at the age of 104.
Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP
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Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP
Actor Marsha Hunt arrives for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association luncheon in Beverly Hills, California, on August 13, 2013. Hunt, one of the last surviving actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age, in 1930 and 1940, passed away at the age of 104.
Jordan Strauss / Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP
TORONTO – Marsha Hunt, one of the last surviving actors from the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s, who worked with performers ranging from Laurence Olivier to Andy Griffith during his interrupted career. segmented for a time by the blacklist of McCarthy’s time, has passed away. She is 104 years old.
Roger Memos, writer and director of the 2015 documentary “Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity,” said Hunt, who appeared in more than 100 films and TV shows, died Wednesday at his home. in Sherman Oaks, California.
A native of Chicago, she moved to Hollywood in 1935 and over the next 15 years, she appeared in dozens of films, from the Preston Sturges comedy “Easy Living” to the adaptation of “Pride and Determination” ant” by Jane Austen starring Olivier and Greer Garson.
As named by MGM as “Hollywood’s Youngest Character Actress.” And by the early 1950s, she was already a star enough to be on the cover of Life magazine and seemingly going to thrive in the new medium of television when suddenly “work ran out,” she remembers. back in 1996.
Hunt opposes the Non-House of Representatives American Activity Committee
The reason, she learned from her agent, was that the communist-hunting Red Channels publication revealed that she had attended a peace conference in Stockholm and other alleged suspicious gatherings. Along with Hollywood stars Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart and Danny Kaye, Hunt also traveled to Washington in 1947 to protest against the Non-Congress American Activities Committee, which was conducting a witch hunt against people communism in the film industry.
“I made 54 movies in my first 16 years in Hollywood,” Hunt said in 1996. “In the last 45 years, I’ve made eight. That shows what a blacklist can do to a career. .”
Hunt focused on the cinema, where the blacklist was not observed, until she occasionally began taking back acting jobs in the late 1950s. She appeared in the touring troupes “The Cocktail Party”. , “The Lady’s Not for Burning” and “The Tunnel of Love,” and on Broadway in “The Devil’s Disciple,” “Legend of Sarah” and “The Paisley Convertible.”
Marcia Virginia Hunt (she later changed her name) was born in Chicago and raised in New York City, the daughter of an insurance lawyer-executive and a voice teacher. . Slim and stylish, with a warm smile and expressive eyes, Hunt studied theater and modelling before making his film debut.
His early marriage to director Jerry Hopper ended in divorce. In 1948, she married screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr. and they had a daughter, who died shortly after giving birth prematurely. Her husband died in 1986.
Hunt’s first film was 1935’s “The Virginia Judge.” She went on to play serious roles in a series of films for Paramount, including “The Accusing Finger” and “Come on Leathernecks,” but, as she tells it, Associated Press in 2020, she got tired of “sweet youthful things” and begged for more important work.
She Almost Got A Major Role In ‘Gone With The Wind’
Hollywood proved a painful upbringing. In “Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity,” she remembers narrowly getting the role of Melanie Wilkes in “Gone With the Wind,” even being secured by producer David O. Selznick. Within days, Olivia de Havilland was announced as the actor who would play Melanie for the 1939 epic.
“That was the day I grew up,” Hunt said in the documentary. “That was the day when I knew I would never be able to break my heart because of this acting career.”
She left Paramount for MGM around the time of “Gone with the Wind” and has had lead or supporting roles in “Seducing Girls”, “Flying Orders” and “Human Comedy” among the series. other movies.
“MGM was an absolute magic,” she recalled in an interview with the Associated Press in 2007. “When I went to the set for a role for a day, they parked my car. I went to the set and found a director’s chair with a sign, ‘Miss Hunt.’ Another sign on my dressing room.
“I said to myself, ‘Any studio that treats players one day that way, really knows how to make pictures. “They have earned my loyalty.”
Her work quickly unraveled after she openly embraced liberal causes, such as participating in a 1947 protest against congressional hearings on prominent communist influence in Hollywood.
“I have never been a communist or even cared about the communist cause,” she declared in 1996. “I am a politically innocent person defending my industry.”
With a few exceptions, such as producer Stanley Kramer’s 1952 family comedy “The Happy Time,” she did not appear on the big screen for most of the 1950s. After that, she did not appear on the big screen. appeared in many television series, including “My Three Sons”, “Matlock”, “All in the Family” and “Murder, She Wrote.”
In her old age, she remained strong and elegant. In 1993, she released “The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930-1940 and Our World Since Then,” a sumptuously illustrated book about fashion during her Hollywood heyday.
A lifelong political activist, Hunt experienced horror in 1962 when she participated in a forum about right-wing extremists and two other participants’ homes were destroyed by homemade bombs on the evening of the same day.
The Los Angeles Times reported: “The bare-faced actress said her home survived the bombing because the terrorists couldn’t find out where she lived.” Police were sent to guard her home.
More recently, she helped create a homeless shelter in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she lived and was named honorary mayor.
Looking back on his active years, Hunt remarked in 1996: “I never coveted an identity as a controversial figure. But having overcome it and found other interests in time. wait, I can look back with some philosophy.”
