Marsha Hunt dead at 104: Paramount and MGM actress once blacklisted in Hollywood dies

A ONCE promising actress whose Hollywood career was wiped out by a communist witch hunt has died.

Marsha Hunt, best known for her roles in These Glamor Girls, Pride and Prejudice and Raw Deal, died Tuesday night of natural causes. She was 104.

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Hunt died peacefully in her home, where she has lived since 1946, director Roger C. Memos told The Hollywood Reporter.

After working as a model, Hunt signed with Paramount Pictures when she was just 17 years old.

When she lost the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind, she decided to switch to MGM, where she landed her most memorable roles.

She really got a chance to stretch in movies like These Glamor Girls, Flight Command, Pride and Prejudice, and The Human Comedy.

Hunt earned the title of “Hollywood’s Youngest Character Actress” when she starred in best picture nominee “The Human Comedy” in 1943, a title of which she is very proud.

Her promising career came to an abrupt end when she joined the Committee for the First Amendment with her husband, Robert Presnell Jr.

The group questioned McCarthy-era attempts to find and excommunicate communists in the entertainment industry.

“The whole thing was so amazing to me,” Hunt told the AP.

“I never understood why I was locked into it, completely.”

“I wasn’t that active or liberal. I was too busy with work. I think I was a liberal by instinct,” she said.

“But it wasn’t who I was. I was an actress with, I think, liberal leanings.”

However, in a recent interview with the Associated Press, Memos said she wishes to be remembered not as the unjustly blacklisted talent, but as a remarkable character actress.

Rather than spend her time campaigning for lead roles, Hunt said she would “beg” to play supporting characters.

“I was determined not to just be a leading lady,” she said.

“I didn’t always want to play the cute young things… I loved character roles so much.

“And playing a lead and winning the lead, that wasn’t the point.”

After leaving acting behind, Hunt invested in humanitarian work in her “home” of Sherman Oaks, California, where she had lived since the 1940’s.

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