Marsha Hunt (actress, born 1917)

Marsha Virginia Hunt (born October 17, 1917) is a retired American film, theatre and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.

Early life

Born Marcia Virginia Hunt, on October 17, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois,^[1] she later changed the spelling of her first name to Marsha.^[2] She was the younger of two girls born to Earl Hunt, who worked as a lawyer, and later, a Social Security Administrator. Minabel Hunt, her mother, worked as a vocal teacher and organist.^[1] Hunt recalled many years later,

I lucked into the most fortuitous, warm, constructive kind of family context imaginable. My father was a top scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa. My mother was a voice coach and accompanist of singers in the concert and opera fields. We didn't have the term "liberated woman", but my mother certainly was... They were brought up, both, in the state of Indiana, which is now called the Bible Belt. They were wholesome, they neither smoked nor drank, and they never used the Lord's name in vain. I never heard a four-letter word. It didn't exist in my wholesome family setting.^[2]

Hunt's family moved to New York City when she was young and began performing in school plays and church functions. She graduated from the Horace Mann High School for Girls in 1934, at 16.^[2]

After graduation, Hunt's parents wanted her to pursue a college degree, but Hunt, unable to "locate a single college or university in the land where you could major in drama before your third year", instead found work modeling for the John Powers Agency and began taking acting classes at the Theodora Irvine Studio for the theatre.^[1][3]

Career

Years at Paramount

Celebrities including Hunt, Robert Taylor, Jean Harlow and Mitzi Green were invited to Washington, D.C., to assist with President's Birthday Ball fundraising activities (1937)

With John Wayne in Born to the West (1937)

In June 1935, at 17, Hunt signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, making her film debut in The Virginia Judge later that same year.^[4] Between 1935 and 1938, she made 12 pictures at Paramount and two "loan-outs" at RKO and 20th Century Fox.^[2] Among her more notable films from this period was the 1937 western Born to the West, co-starring John Wayne.^[5]

Paramount declined to renew Hunt's contract in 1938, and she spent a few years starring in B-films produced by Republic and Monogram,^[6] before winning a supporting role in MGM's These Glamour Girls (1939) opposite Lana Turner and Lew Ayres. Other roles in major studio productions soon followed, including supporting roles as Mary Bennet in MGM's version of Pride and Prejudice (1940) and as Martha Scott's surrogate child Hope Thompson in Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941).^[2]

Years at MGM

In 1941, Hunt signed a contract with MGM, where she remained for the next six years.^[2] During this period she had starring roles in 21 films,^[7] including The Penalty (1941)^[8] opposite Lionel Barrymore, Panama Hattie (1942) opposite Ann Sothern and Red Skelton, and in the war drama Pilot No. 5 (1943) in which she was cast as the love interest of Franchot Tone.

Hollywood blacklist

Disturbed by the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Hunt and her husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell, Jr., became members of the Committee for the First Amendment.^[9][10] On Oct 26, 1947, Hunt took part in Hollywood Fights Back, a star-studded radio program, co-written by her husband, protesting the activities of HUAC.^[11][12]. The next day Hunt flew with a group of about 30 actors, directors, writers, and filmmakers (including John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Danny Kaye), to Washington to protest the actions of HUAC.^[9][10]

When she returned to Hollywood just three days later, things had changed. She was asked to denounce her activities if she wanted to find more work – she refused.^[1] In 1950, Hunt was named as a potential Communist or Communist sympathizer (along with 151 other actors, writers and directors) in the anti-Communist publication Red Channels.^[2][12] The publication claimed that her leanings were made evident by her supposedly subversive actions, including: asking the Supreme Court to review the convictions of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo; recording a message in support of a rally organized by the Stop Censorship Committee in 1948; signing a statement in 1946 issued by the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions; and speaking at rally organized by the Progressive Citizens of America in 1946.^[2]

After the publication of Red Channels in 1950, work became scarce for Hunt and Presnell.^[12] Hunt had worked steadily from 1935 until 1949, appearing in 52 films. In 1944 she polled seventh in a list by exhibitors of "Stars of Tomorrow".^[13] After being blacklisted, Hunt appeared in only three films during the next eight years.^[12]

Agencies and producers agreed to deem all one hundred and fifty "unemployable". That actually began the blacklist practice, ending all our careers and livelihoods in broadcasting. I don't know that the movie studios would have blacklisted me if Red Channels hadn't named me and made them think I might be a Communist. So to play safe, they put me on their secret blacklist...

I think by 1950 it was clear that the whole of show business was under political siege. But, miraculously, the Broadway stage was spared. People were not denied work on the Broadway stage. Movies, radio and television were overcome, but the theatre was not. When I was unable to work in any of the blacklist media, I could always do a play in stock, around the country.^[14]

During an interview in 1995, Hunt stated that she believed producer Richard J. Collins was among those responsible for her inclusion in the blacklist.^[15]

I never met Richard Collins, but when he was in some executive post on Bonanza, a friend of mine knew him slightly. At one point, when I was recommended for a script, she was astonished to hear him say, "Don't bother bringing up Marsha Hunt to me. As long as I am connected with this show, she will never work on it."^[15]

In 1957, her career began to pick up. She appeared in six films during the next three years before announcing her semi-retirement in 1960.

Later work

Following her semi-retirement in 1960, Hunt appeared in small roles in five films and numerous television shows, including an episode of the ABC medical drama Breaking Point. In 1962 she appeared in the season-nine episode of Gunsmoke titled "The Glory and the Mud".

In 1971, she appeared in the movie Johnny Got His Gun, written by fellow blacklist member, Dalton Trumbo, playing the mother of the title character portrayed by Timothy Bottoms.

On February 8, 1988, she appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, in the episode "Too Short a Season" as Anne Jameson, wife of an admiral who took an age reversing drug.

In 1997 she appeared as Ethel Thayer in the Santa Susana Repertory Company's production of On Golden Pond.^[16]

Hunt in 2013

Hunt played Elizabeth Lyons in a 2006 movie, Chloe's Prayer.^[17]

She produced the CD Tony London: Songs From the Heart with the Page Cavanaugh Trio that includes two of the fifty songs that Hunt has composed.

In 2008, Hunt appeared in a short film noir, The Grand Inquisitor, as Hazel Reedy, the could-be widow of one of America's most infamous unapprehended serial killers.^[18] The film premiered at the 6th annual Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco.

In 2013, Hunt debuted a clip of a song she wrote 40 years earlier titled "Here's to All Who Love" about love and same-sex marriage.^[19] Sung by Glee star Bill A. Jones the clip immediately went viral.^[19] It will be featured in Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity, an upcoming documentary about her life.^[20] The documentary was scheduled to debut at the Palm Springs and Santa Barbara International Film Festivals in January 2015.^[21]

Later life

Hunt was named honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks, California in 1983.^[21]

In 1993, her book The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and '40s and Our World Since Then was published by Fallbrook Publishing.

Hunt still identifies as a political liberal, and is very concerned with such issues as global pollution, worldwide poverty,^[21] peace in third world nations , and population growth.

In 1955, after a trip opened her eyes to the issue of hunger in the Third World, Hunt gave speeches throughout the United States, encouraging Americans to join the fight against starvation in the Third World by joining the United Nations Association.^[1][21] Also dedicated to fighting hunger and homelessness at home, Hunt was a founder of the "San Fernando Valley Mayor's Fund for the Homeless" and helped to open one of the first homeless shelters in the San Fernando Valley.^[1][21] Hunt also raised funds for the creation of "Rose Cottage", a day care shelter for homeless children,^[21] and served for many years on the Advisory Board of Directors for the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, a large non-profit, where she advocates for adults and children affected by homelessness and mental illness.

Personal life

Hunt is Methodist.^[22] She married Jerry "Jay" Hopper, assistant head of the editing department at Paramount, in November 1938.^[23] The marriage ended in divorce in 1945. Hunt married her second husband, screenwriter and radio director Robert Presnell, Jr., in 1946. Hunt was pregnant while filming Carnegie Hall and very sick; a premature daughter who was born in July 1947 and died the next day.^[24] They remained together until his death in 1986 at 71.^[25]

Filmography

Film

References

• McGilligan, Patrick and Paul Buhle (1997). Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (Glenn Lovell Q&A with Hunt). St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-17046-7. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marsha Hunt.

• Marsha Hunt documentary film
• Marsha Hunt at the Internet Movie Database
• Marsha Hunt at the Internet Broadway Database
  
• Interview with Glenn Lovell for 50 YEARS: SAG REMEMBERS THE BLACKLIST
• Interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth on PBS's "Newshour" about Blacklisting
• Attitude Toward Aging with Marsha Hunt, WebMD Live Events Transcript
• Marsha Hunt on the cover of Life magazine ; March 6 1950
• Interview October, 2014 in the Indianapolis Star