MARSHA HUNT

(17 October 1917 - 7 September 2022)

The American actress Marsha Hunt, who has died aged 104, was a hard-working player in films between 1935 and 2006. Along the way she was also popular on television from 1949 until 2008. As busy as she was, she never achieved Hollywood star status. It had nothing to do with her ability as an actress, although being blacklisted by Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) may have held her back. She had an attractive personality, was something of a glamour-girl as well as a versatile performer, but despite her obvious abilities both Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer never made her into the star that she probably should have become.

She was born Marcia Virginia Hunt to father Earl Hunt, a Chicago lawyer, and her mother Minabel, a former opera singer and voice coach. From the age of three Marcia began acting in school plays and church socials. After graduation she became a model and a singer on radio, inheriting her musical skills from her mother. Changing her name to Marsha she attended the Theodora Irvine Drama School. It wasn’t long until she moved to Hollywood and at the age of 17 was offered a contract by Paramount Pictures.

Marsha Hunt’s first film was The Virginia Judge (1935) with Walter C. Kelly and Robert Cummings, after which she had the title role in Gentle Julia with Jane Withers. She continued to work in fairly routine productions which are now largely forgotten. By the end of the 1930s, however, she had made over twenty films. In 1940 she appeared with Anna Neagle and Ray Milland in the musical comedy Irene, and then she played Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Her film roles improved with Robert Young in The Trial of Mary Dugan, with Greer Garson again in Blossoms in the Dust, with Red Skelton and Ann Sothern in Panama Hattie, and with Garson again and Gregory Peck in The Valley of Decision. She also had the title role in Jules Dassin’s romantic comedy The Affairs of Martha (1942).

Hunt kept on working in films throughout the 1940s and '50s and also carved out a career on television beginning with The Philco Television Playhouse in 1949. She was in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Peck's Bad Girl with Wendell Corey, The Detectives with Robert Taylor, and other series such as Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, The Defenders and Ben Casey. Some of her better, later feature films include Philip Dunne’s Blue Denim (!959) playing Brandon DeWilde’s mother, and Dalton Trumbo’s (another HUAC casualty) Johnny Got His Gun (1971). She stopped filming in 1988 after an appearance in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation but returned for Chloe’s Prayer, her last film (in 2006).

She also had a stage career, having appeared in Shaw’s The Devil's Disciple with Maurice Evans, The Tunnel of Love with Johnny Carson, and Jules Dassin’s production of Joy to the World with Alfred Drake, among other shows. She also wrote an important book, The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s & '40s, which has become indispensable for film and TV costumers.

Marsha Hunt married the writer-director Jerry Hopper in 1938, but they divorced in 1945. She then married the writer Robert Presnell Jr, who died in 1986. They had a foster son, Peter Robert Presnell.

MICHAEL DARVELL