Requiescat in pace - Marsha Hunt

Marsha Hunt left us last week at 104 years old, a sparkling human being of whom we can truly say had a life well lived.  There are fewer film actors from the 1930s left to us these days, so it is remarkable that the lady came to Hollywood -- and thereby to us classic film fans -- in 1935.

She played opposite everyone:  John Wayne before his stardom took off, John Barrymore, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Laurence Olivier, Greer Garson...you name it.  Of the last two mentioned, we covered her work in Pride and Prejudice (1940) here.  Her role as Mary is some of the best moments of the film:  

"In Marsha Hunt we have one of the funniest Mary Bennetts on screen, with her broad, almost campy playing of the unattractive and dull sister, particularly in her too-eager reaction when her mother admonishes her to smile at a party. The sour note she hits in her performance of “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton” is priceless."

Mary has been played by others as awkward and foolish, dour and pompous, but Marsha Hunt captured the absurdity in the character that I think Jane Austen would have applauded. 

Marsha Hunt had a sense of humor and a sense of humanity, and she would need it.  In 1950, she was blacklisted and the Radical Right, by means of Hollywood, torched her career.  The blacklisting episode, an era that ruined the careers and lives of many liberals and progressives in the film industry, is what seems to have been most captured in the headlines about her passing.  We covered her work in the radio program Hollywood Fights Back here.

But she was more than someone who got thrown under the bus for her integrity.  She went to work in theatre, which is famously tolerant and wonderfully belligerent to those who are intolerant, and we mentioned her appearance at the LaJolla Playhouse.

She was, above all, a humanitarian, and worked on behalf of the poverty-stricken, the homeless, the hungry for many decades.  In her work, and in her life, she was a champion.

The 2015 documentary, Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity tells her story, and if it pops up again on TCM, which I expect it may in a tribute to her, don't miss it.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.