MARSHA’S IN THE DUST
Golden Age of Hollywood actress Marsha Hunt has met the ultimate blacklist aged 104. Highlighted as “Hollywood’s youngest character actress” in her day, she played a number of innocuous roles for Paramount in the 30s and was a leading lady to John Wayne. She auditioned for the part of Melanie in Gone with the Wind. A star from that film being alive in the 2020s would’ve been just weird.
She switched to MGM, and was the last survivor of this 1943 photo of the MGM stable (fourth from the right in the third row). She made her first big impression as a suicidal student in These Glamour Girls, opposite Lana Turner, and other big roles included Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier-led Austen adaptation Pride and Prejudice, Mickey Rooney dramedy The Human Comedy, and Claire Trevor film noir Raw Deal. That all came to a screeching halt under the throes of the Red Scare, when she and her screenwriter husband were among a gaggle of Hollywood heavyweights protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee. While most of the protestors – Bogart included – reneged to save their hides, Hunt didn’t and was blacklisted. And she wasn’t even a communist, moreso a mainline liberal, she just thought McCarthy and his ilk were sods.
Her film career scuppered, Hunt turned to a life of humanitarianism after touring the world and being stricken by the impoverished state of Third World countries. She raised awareness of world hunger and climate change, co-founded homeless shelters, and supported gay marriage long before its mainstream acceptance. She found steady work in TV, including roles in The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and eventually returned to film, where she appeared in the anti-war Johnny Got His Gun, written and directed by fellow McCarthyism scalp Dalton Trumbo. 18 teams are seeing red, including a joker hit for ALL QUIET IN THE WESTERNS FRONT, and Gray Panthers, who continues to benefit from the collapse in 1910s remnants in his efforts to roll back the years in the Theme Team League.
And no she did not shag Mick Jagger!
Marsha Hunt
17 October 1917 – 7 September 2022, aged 104
18 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀 4 POINTS, 🃏 (x1) 8 POINTS)