SAG-AFTRA Statement on the Passing of Marsha Hunt

SAG-AFTRA mourns the passing of former Screen Actors Guild board member Marsha Hunt, a legendary actor and social activist during Hollywood’s Golden Age and SAG’s last remaining board member of the 1940s. She died Wednesday at 104. In 2018, the union honored Hunt with the SAG-AFTRA Founders Award.

A member of the union since 1938, Hunt was not only a phenomenal actor and writer, she was also a devoted philanthropist who fought for what was right. She was passionate beyond compare and her work both on and off screen will stand the test of time.

Hunt was born in Chicago on Oct. 17, 1917, though at a young age her family moved to New York City, where she found her love for performing in school plays and church events. In 1935, her career began as a model for the John Robert Powers Agency.

Soon after, Hunt signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Studios, and then, in 1941, a six-year contract with MGM Studios. She received praise for her work in many films, including Paramount’s Born to the West (1937) and MGM’s These Glamor Girls (1939), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), The Penalty (1941) and Pilot No. 5 (1943). While she performed major roles in over 50 films, acting was not her only notable accomplishment.

Hunt served on the board of Screen Actors Guild from March 1945 to November 1947. In October 1947, just three months after the death of her newborn daughter, she fought to defend freedom of speech when she and her husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., joined the Committee for the First Amendment. Hunt and other actors on the Committee, including former SAG board member Humphrey Bogart and wife Lauren Bacall, traveled to the Washington, D.C., hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in support of the First Amendment rights of the “Hollywood Ten.”

Her outspokenness cost her a place on the SAG board, as the nominating committee did not choose her to run as a candidate for re-election the following month. A longtime liberal but never a Communist, Hunt’s thriving acting career largely came to a halt after her name appeared in the publication Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television in June 1950 — three months after she graced the cover of LIFE magazine. She was blacklisted, but she survived and put her energies into humanitarian works.

Despite rarely working in the film industry after her blacklisting, Hunt dedicated her efforts to volunteering with various organizations such as UNICEF and the United Nations, where she continued to fight for justice and humanity. She also served on the advisory board of directors for the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, raised funds for a daycare shelter for homeless children and was named honorary mayor of Sherman Oaks, California, in 1983. A documentary film on her life, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity: A Life of Acting and Activism was released in 2015.

Hunt reflected upon her life and her career: “My life has been a great ride with more than its share of high points. Even the lower points taught me and led me to higher ones. In my teen years, I thought I was born to act, but when my acting career was interrupted, I discovered a wonderful world of challenges, which became opportunities, opening up my life far beyond acting.” Hunt said. “I am very grateful for all the good fortune I have been given in my blessed life.”

About SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA represents approximately 160,000 actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other entertainment and media professionals. SAG-AFTRA members are the faces and voices that entertain and inform America and the world. A proud affiliate of the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA has national offices in Los Angeles and New York and local offices nationwide representing members working together to secure the strongest protections for entertainment and media artists into the 21st century and beyond. Visit SAG-AFTRA online at SAGAFTRA.org.