Roger Memos, the writer-director of the documentary film Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity (2015), confirmed the death but did not know the immediate cause. Few performers had a more auspicious beginning. After a brief modeling career in Manhattan, Ms. Hunt headed to Hollywood at 17 at the suggestion of an admiring photographer who sensed her future in film and orchestrated a ploy to pique the interest of movie studios. A picture of her was sent to every newspaper in Los Angeles with text about how the glamorous cover girl was turning down several studio offers. Of the films, it was reported: “There are no pictures for me.” The ploy worked, landing her a contract with Paramount Studios and starring in her first film, The Virginia Judge (1935), opposite Robert Cummings. With her heart-shaped face and wholesome charm, Ms. Hunt appeared in more than a dozen films in her first two years on screen – some alongside John Wayne and Buster Crump. Few stood out enough to catapult her to cinematic heights. Ms. Hunt said she begged studio executives to end her run of romance chapters and give her a better range of spare parts, even if it meant dropping from the marquee fees. She said Paramount officials told her it seemed ungrateful, given her excellence. After her contract expired, she freelanced admirably, often in low-budget “poverty-barred” studios. “I was 20 years old at the time and I was a fan because I had only played sweet young girls,” she told Film Talk in 2004. “I took whatever I could get, just to keep myself busy,” she added. “I worked in studios that made pictures – and I mean entire feature films – in six days.” A small role in the popular Andy Hardy series – as a prodigal wife in “The Hardys Ride High” (1939) – led to a contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most prestigious studio in town. Ms. Hunt became one of MGM’s most reliable and attractive second-tier forces. In “Kid Glove Killer” (1942), a taut suspense film with elements of light comedy, she played an assistant to Van Heflin’s coroner. She was the doting wife of Robert Young in “Joe Smith, American” (1942) and the love interest of brave pilot Franchot Tone in the wartime propaganda film “Pilot #5” (1943). He also earned supporting roles in A-list productions such as “Pride and Prejudice” (1940) starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, “The Human Comedy” (1943) with Mickey Rooney and “The Valley of Decision” (1945 ) with Gregory. Peck and Garson. “I didn’t care about the billing,” Ms. Hunt told Film Talk. “I didn’t care about being the star or the fame or anything like that. I didn’t want to be a star: I wanted to be the best actress I could be, and they let me grow with each role.” In addition to her film work, Ms. Hunt also became known for her volunteer activities raising morale and funds for the Allied war effort in World War II. He embarked on a USO tour of Canada and Alaska, sold war bonds, and became the leader of a group of hostesses at a Hollywood canteen serving servicemen on leave. “I think I danced with five thousand men every Saturday night,” he later said. Her career faltered after the war. In a small role, he was cast against type – as a vamp – in “Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman” (1947) starring Susan Hayward as an alcoholic singer. Ms. Hunt also had the misfortune of being the good girl in the crime drama Raw Deal (1948). She successfully turned to television and Broadway to boost her profile and show what Hollywood had failed to fully capture. Reviewing her work as Viola in a 1949 NBC production of “Twelfth Night,” New York Times television critic Jack Gould praised her understated charisma and mastery of making Shakespearean couplets sound effortlessly conversational. Her work as the priest’s wife opposite Maurice Evans in a well-received 1950 Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Apprentice landed her on the cover of Life magazine — a major publicity coup. Her timing was unfortunate. Her name also appeared soon after in Red Channels, a leaflet that fueled anti-communist paranoia and had huge influence on the hiring decisions of television and film studios. Before Bannon, the “Hollywood Ten” were jailed for contempt of Congress The most serious charge, Red Channels noted, was Ms. Hunt’s involvement with the Committee on the First Amendment. This group of about two dozen high-profile entertainers, including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, flew to Washington in 1947 to protest the jailing of 10 famous writers, directors and producers in contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal their political allegiances to the House of the United Nations. – Committee on American Activities. Decades later, he recalled the HUAC investigation as “an appalling display of the denial of civil rights.” It was a time when livelihoods were destroyed by insinuations of loyalty in Moscow, and while he was never imprisoned or charged with any crime, he found work drying up. He told the New York Herald Tribune in 1956 that he twice signed anti-communist oaths of allegiance to get jobs in film and television, but that he drew the line by taking out an ad in trade papers. “I’ve stood up for a lot of pictures, but it’s a very unyielding wall,” he told the Herald Tribune. “The price of work today is guilt and repentance. I am not guilty so I cannot repent. If I had only been a communist, I could have joined the other prodigal sons and daughters and been welcomed back into the fold.” Marcia Virginia Hunt was born in Chicago on October 17, 1917 to an insurance executive and voice teacher. He grew up in New York, where he developed an interest in acting in elementary school. After graduating at 16 from Horace Mann Girls’ High School, she became a John Powers model to subsidize her drama classes. Her first marriage, to editor and future Paramount director Jerry Hopper, ended in divorce. She was then married to screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr. from 1946 until his death in 1986. Her stepson, Peter Presnell, died in 2020. She had no immediate survivors. Ms. Hunt worked intermittently after the Blacklist era — notably as the mother of a disfigured war veteran in “Johnny Got His Gun” (1971) — but said the “drive” in her screen career was gone. He became involved in activism, spurred on by a two-month trip around the world in the mid-1950s. Exposure to what he called “the extremes of beauty and splendor and . . . the destitution of abject poverty” prompted her involvement with the American Association for the United Nations. (The group supports the world organization and is now known as the United Nations Association of the United States of America.) The antithesis of 1940s Hollywood As president of the San Fernando Valley chapter, she raised funds and served as a passionate voice on food insecurity, refugee crises and other humanitarian issues. After an improvised bomb destroyed the office in 1963 – part of a plot of similar terrorist attacks targeting the UN team and interfaith officials in the region – he spoke out against right-wing extremism. Decades later, he worked to relieve the homeless in the Los Angeles area. She was rarely more expressive than when discussing a life spent pushing back against authority. Recalling her blacklisting, she told Film Talk: “I was told it wasn’t really about communism – that was the thing that scared everyone – it was control and power. “The way you gain control,” he continued, “is to get everyone to agree with what’s right at the time, what’s acceptable. Don’t question anything, don’t speak out, don’t have your own ideas, don’t express it, never be eloquent, and if you’re ever one of those things, you’re controversial. And that’s just as bad, maybe worse, than being a communist.”
