Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity

Just watched this marvelous documentary about actress and activistt Marsha Hunt.

If you enjoy Hollywood history, coupled with an unbridled display of activism and just plain unadulterated ballsy-ness, you'll fall in love with the ageless Ms. Hunt.

With a memory better than most people I know, the spry 101 year old (who turns 102 in a few months) reminisces about her life, entertainment career and activism. She talks fondly of her parents, going to Hollywood and becoming a leading lady in her first film, taking on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC, a real "witch hunt"), being blacklisted (but refusing to back down), and opening housing for the homeless.

Just about everything in this Roger C. Memos' production rings true today and sometimes it was hard not to bite my lip with the realization that we're still going through most of this.

But in the end, there's the beautiful Marsha, Marsha, Marsha...who continues to fight for meaningful and righteous causes.

Long live this tough yet soulful lady.

A loving and revealing documentary about an extraordinary woman, this shows Ms. Hunt to be, among other things, a good actress, a fierce advocate of human rights, and a survivor of Hollywood's golden age with amazing recall. Generous with film clips and interviews of other survivors we're pleased to meet (Norman Corwin, Norman Lloyd, Walter Bernstein, Margaret O'Brien), it chronicles how she was blacklisted and not only survived it, but was motivated to become a force for good, in so many ways, notably as a hardworking UN functionary. It's also a sweet love story: After a brief first marriage (and they stayed civil and even worked with each other later), she met a perfect mate, the screenwriter Robert Presnell, and really did live happily ever after. She's such a force of nature that we're kind of left wondering what aspects of her we're not seeing, but what we do see is lovely and impressive and inspiring. Really, after watching this, you may be motivated to go out and volunteer for something.

If you're a fan of TCM, you might know Marsha Hunt as a lovely, charming, and very talented young actress of the '30's and '40's (Pride and Prejudice, The Human Comedy, Cry Havoc), and you may well wonder why she never quite attained the "household name" status of some of her contemporaries. This engrossing documentary shows how she never left the movie business, but the movie business shamefully left her. (Like me, you may never again think quite as highly of Humphrey Bogart and John Huston.) Fortunately, in some ways, the movies' loss was the world's gain, as she turned her attentions to many serious causes - hunger, homelessness, promoting greater understanding and cooperation in the world through the United Nations - while continuing to work as an actress on the stage. Eleanor Roosevelt became a friend and mentor over the years, and the documentary has comments from many well-known admirers attesting to Marsha's eloquence and persuasiveness on behalf of good causes. The screening we saw was attended by Miss Hunt herself, 100 years young, and still recalling a trip she made with Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor to meet FDR in 1937 on behalf of what would become the March of Dimes. Living history. This film should be essential viewing for anyone interested in Golden Age Hollywood and equally important as inspiration to lead a deeply fulfilling life.

A thousand thanks to Roger Memos and his team for creating this fire documentary. It is a story I did not know and it is a fascinating one!

I have to admit, I had no idea who Marsha Hunt was, and I have seen many of the films that she was in. It's not that she made a bad impression on me, just that she left no lasting impression in the films themselves. After finding out what a heart and a brain she has, I want to rewatch her films and see what I've been missing.

I've heard stories about the blacklists many times. Usually not in great detail. But this documentary really struck me. How ironic that the US would hardly be finished fighting fascism in Europe and then turn around and have the government and the film industry that it cowed behave like fascists in regards to actors and writers in their employ. They were literally blacklisting people because they had gone to Communist meetings in the 1930s. Versus what? Think what a great success capitalism was in 1935 as people were starving in the streets? And all Marsha Hunt really ever did was openly disagree with this behavior of her government, which is her right.

I guess what made this documentary be a such a standout was that so much of this story is being told by Marsha herself, not out of bitterness but as a cautionary tale. She's had the good fortune to live to be 103 as I am writing this.

She also goes into great detail about her trip around the world in 1955 and how what she saw on this trip caused her to work for the United Nations for many years. It is truly an inspiring story. And somehow Eddie Muller and film noir ends up part of the story too. Highly recommended.