Marsha Hunt was a prolific actress in the 1930s and 1940s, with a promising career ahead of her until she fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist. For the rest of her life, she became just as well-known for her activism as she was for acting. She passed away on Wednesday at age 104.
“Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity” director Roger C. Memos announced her death.
In the early days of her career, actress Ms. Hunt was known for taking on a wide range of roles in numerous films – from big budget movies to more independent productions, including romances, period pieces and the popular crime dramas later classified as film noir.
She performed in “Pride and Prejudice” and “The Human Comedy,” both with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, in 1940. In 1943, she was featured in “The Human Comedy.” She became a familiar face on television throughout the years, appearing as minor roles on “Matlock,” “Murder, She Wrote,” and other shows.
She was forced to seek passage out of the country through an underground railroad, but her employment suffered a setback: the Red Scare.
Ms. Hunt’s hardships started in October 1947 when she, part of the group called the Committee for the First Amendment, made a trip to Washington with other major names in film such as John Huston, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The objective of their visit was to keep an eye on and demonstrate against the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation claiming Communist infiltration of cinema.
Many of those who went on that journey subsequently disavowed it, describing it as ill-advised. However, Ms. Hunt did not. Producers began to regard her with suspicion immediately after she returned from Communist Poland, despite the fact that she was never a member of the Communist Party and her only apparent crime was signing petitions in favor of civil liberties causes.
Her status in Hollywood was already at risk when “Red Channels,” a pamphlet containing the names of people in the entertainment industry suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers, was published in 1950. Among the people named were Orson Welles, Pete Seeger, Leonard Bernstein and Marsha Hunt.
She had already won acclaim for her portrayal of Viola in a live broadcast of “Twelfth Night” in 1949. Jack Gould of The New York Times praised her, calling her “an actress with striking and soothing beauty who was also at ease with Shakespeare’s verse and couplets.” Her turn as the Devil’s Disciple on Broadway in 1950, which was featured on the cover of Life magazine, was the focus of a cover story in Time magazine. However, the film came to an end.
In 1955, with few obligations at home, Ms. Hunt and her husband decided to take a year-long trip around the world. While she was traveling, she falls in love with different aspects of many cultures which then resulted in her falling in love “with the planet” as a whole, as she told The Globalist website back in 2008.
She became an active champion of the United Nations, delivering lectures on behalf of the World Health Organization and other U.N. agencies. In 1960, she wrote and produced “A Call From the Stars” to bring attention to refugees’ plight through television documentary form.
She also went after problems closer to home. In her capacity as honorary mayor of the Sherman Oaks region of Los Angeles, a post she held from 1983 until 2001, she worked to increase public awareness of homelessness in Southern California and organized a group of honorary mayors that donated money to construct shelters.
