Marsha Hunt

Biography

Marsha Hunt (born Marcia Virginia Hunt in Chicago, 17 October 1917; died Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, 7 September 2022) was an American actress, model and activist. Her career spanned almost eighty years, which made her one of the last surviving stars of classic Hollywood and its longest-lived actress. She matters to film enthusiasts for her work in the 1930s and 1940s and for her place among the victims of the blacklist during McCarthyism.

Hunt modelled in New York before signing a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures in June 1935, at the age of seventeen. The studio mostly cast her as ingenues, and in 1937 she shared the screen with John Wayne in the Western Born to the West, a couple of years before he broke through. After Paramount ended her contract in 1938 she worked in low-budget films, and in 1939 she won a supporting part in MGM's These Glamour Girls. From 1941 to 1947 she was under contract to MGM, where she starred in 21 films. Among them were Pride and Prejudice (1940), in which she played Mary Bennet opposite Laurence Olivier, and None Shall Escape (1944), now seen as one of the first films about the Holocaust.

In 1947 Hunt and her husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., joined the Committee for the First Amendment, which questioned the legitimacy of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1950 she was named in Red Channels, an anti-Communist publication, and her film work almost disappeared. In the years that followed she turned mainly to television and theatre. Between 1948 and 1967 she acted in six Broadway plays, and she directed Jules Dassin and Sam Wanamaker, two other figures hit by McCarthyism. After a partial retirement in 1960 she returned to small roles in films and to numerous television series. In 1971 she played the mother of the title character in Johnny Got His Gun, written by Dalton Trumbo, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes that year.

Hunt was also an activist. In 1955 she spoke across the United States about world hunger, encouraging support for the United Nations Association. She helped open one of the first homeless shelters in the San Fernando Valley, produced a television broadcast about refugees in 1960, and served for many years on the advisory board of a community mental health centre in the same area. She was married to Robert Presnell Jr. from 1946 until his death in 1986, and she was made honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks in 1983.

Hunt's legacy combines her classic filmography with a long record of public engagement. She turned one hundred in 2017. After the deaths of Norman Lloyd and Renée Simonot in 2021, she was regarded as the second-oldest living actor in the world, behind the Belgian Sabine André. She died at home of natural causes in 2022, aged 104.

Key films

• Pride and Prejudice (1940)
• None Shall Escape (1944)
• Raw Deal (1948)
• Johnny Got His Gun (1971)