Elegant movie star whose career was disrupted by Hollywood’s blacklist

Marsha Hunt looked back fondly on her role as the plain and bookish Mary, the third of the Bennet sisters in MGM’S 1940 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. ‘‘[It was] a delicious character for me to play – squinting through glasses, singing off-key, wearing sausage curls,’’ she recalled, adding self-deprecatingly: ‘‘I wouldn’t cause one male heart in a thousand to miss a beat.’’

There was, however, a problem with her singing. She was so naturally musical that she struggled to perform sufficiently out of tune to justify Mr Bennet’s immortal line, ‘‘That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough’’, and had to be coached for several weeks in the art of singing badly.

‘‘I didn’t want it at first,’’ she said at the time of the film’s release. ‘‘But when I found I was going to be a near-sighted, squinting, priggish wallflower who sang flat and busted up romances – oh boy.’’

Previously Hunt, who was tall and willowy with sparkling blue eyes, had deservedly been described as ‘‘Hollywood’s youngest character actress’’. Despite being from the east coast, she was cast in four westerns. When she complained that she should be in easterns instead, she was told she was best suited to westerns because her height meant she would look tall in the saddle against the skyline.

Despite making more than 50 films between 1935 and 1950, the ‘‘red scare’’ meant that Hunt never managed to fulfil her early promise. In October 1947 she joined the Committee for the First Amendment, a group of prominent Hollywood actors founded by the directors William Wyler and John Huston. They were flown to Washington to witness congressional hearings at which the so-called Hollywood Nineteen, a group of screenwriters, were questioned about their alleged communist affiliations.

Members of the committee were subjected to a concerted campaign of smear, misquotation and misrepresentation. ‘‘In my own case, I was quoted as saying things I would never say, at a function I never attended,’’ Hunt explained.

Before long Hunt was being attacked by Red Channels, an anti-communist gossip sheet which branded her a ‘‘patriotically suspect citizen’’. The publication falsely listed several affiliations under her name and listed others that were innocent. Suddenly, the offers of film roles all but dried up.

Stanley Kramer bravely cast her in The Happy Time (1952), in which she played Charles Boyer’s wife. However, she was told that her contract would be broken unless she denounced the 1947 trip to Washington as having been organised by communists. She refused, saying this would have been a lie. Instead, she gave a statement ‘‘expressing my

Do you know someone who deserves a Life Story? Email obituaries@dompost.co.nz pride and affection for my country’s form of government’’, which was just enough for her to retain the role. Although The Happy Time was a light comedy, she recalled that the film’s title and subject was belied by her offscreen burden.

Although never officially proscribed, Hunt found herself ‘‘grey listed’’, reduced to a virtual non-person in the film industry by way of nods and winks.

Marcia Virginia Hunt was born in

Chicago, the younger of two sisters. Their father, Earl Hunt, was a lawyer of conservative Republican disposition, and their mother, Minabel, was an accompanist and singing teacher. She moved to Hollywood in 1934 with her sister and in 1938 married Jerry Hopper, a Paramount editor.

Paramount never got the measure of her but she fared better under contract to MGM from 1930 to 1945. After Pride and Prejudice she was Garson’s sister again in Blossoms in the Dust (1941). She played a spoilt rich girl in The Human Comedy (1943) with Mickey Rooney; was given top billing as a Polish teacher in Andre De Toth’s None Shall Escape (1944), the first film to depict Nazi atrocities against the Jews.

Her first marriage was dissolved in 1945 and the following year she married the screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr. Her only child, a daughter who was born prematurely, died at a day old in 1947 and Hunt and Presnell subsequently became foster parents. He died in 1986 and she always treasured a comical utterance he made to her before they went to sleep one night during the blacklist years: ‘‘Cheer up, it gets worse.’’

For reasons she never understood, her husband was never blacklisted. Indeed, he even served as a ‘‘front’’ by allowing the blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to use his name on a film, though he did not charge for the privilege as others did.

With no film work available, Hunt turned to the stage, performing in numerous plays around the US during the 1950s and 1960s. Here she was paid only for the weeks of performance, not for rehearsal time, and was required to meet her own accommodation expenses. She called it ‘‘a costly way to make a living’’, but was determined to make a contribution to the household.

By the time the blacklist petered out, Hunt was of an age when strong featured roles for women were few and her acting career never regained momentum. She played the mother of Natalie Wood in Bombers B-52 (1957). Her other film appearances included in Blue Denim (1959), which was directed and cowritten by Philip Dunne, one of the organisers of the 1947 trip to Washington, and as Timothy Bottoms’ mother in Johnny Got His Gun (1971), written by Trumbo.

She told how her film career ‘‘tallied just a few more romantic leads than supporting feature roles’’, adding: ‘‘I was not dreaming of stardom. I just wanted to become the best actress I could, and mostly those opportunities came in featured roles rather than in lead roles.’’

Hunt also appeared in TV shows, including The Outer Limits in the 1960s, Ironside and Harry O in the 1970s, and Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980s. Her last film role was in The Grand Inquisitor (2008), a short film noir in which she played the possible wife of one of America’s most notorious unapprehended serial killers.

‘‘ I was quoted as saying things I would never say, at a function I never attended.’’

Marsha Hunt on the smear campaign against her during the ‘‘red scare’’ period of US history.

In 1993 she published The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and 40s and Our World Since Then, a curious combination of memoir and fashion history. Looking back on how the blacklist had blighted her career, she always looked for the positive aspect. Having been ‘‘closeted on a soundstage’’ until the blacklist came along, she found herself with time on her hands and decided to use it by becoming a champion for social activism, presenting telethons for cerebral palsy, campaigning for UN projects and fundraising for the American Red Cross.

It was typical of Hunt’s generous spirit that she was never bitter. The key to her survival, she said, was her fulfilling family life. In later years she was able to reflect on the pernicious nature of the blacklist era as someone who fell into the category of what the historian Victor Navasky called, with intended irony, a ‘‘guilty bystander’’.