I’ve always thought it absurd that the average punter in the street raises up movie stars (whether it be Hollywood or any other derivative film community) to the status of demi-gods (as they do with pop and rock stars and elité sportspersons). Yes I know that it was ever thus, film stars in the silent era were arguably even more venerated by society given that at that time they did not have to compete with popular singers and sporting stars for the public’s kudos.
The media is of course deeply complicit in this with its obsessive focus on Hollywood box-office stars, especially the popular gossip mags’ hanging on every utterance and info snippet of headline-grabbing Hollywood A-listers like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – a custom which is jejune and banal in the extreme. If these overblown ‘celebs’ make even a shallow pronouncement on environmental or human rights issues or announce their latest Third World orphan acquisition projects, this receives an inordinate amount of drooling media attention.
This ultra-reverence is ridiculously inane given that the great majority of movie stars are not necessarily exemplars of propriety and moral rectitude, and sometimes behave like pampered prima donnas in their overweening self-centredness. Proportionate to the rest of society, movie stars often behave badly, they have equally-manoeuvrable morals, they take drugs, they drink too much and beat their wives, extravagantly waste money, are unfaithful, get divorced (disproportionately to society at large in this case!), they are after all onlyactors! And yet media outlets continue to elevate them to the loftiest reaches of societal respect, as if some special higher wisdom is implicit in their trade.
Consequently she was ‘outed’ by the McCarthyists in ‘Red Channels’ (a right wing publication blacklisting suspected ‘subversives’ in the arts and media) and her burgeoning film career suffered accordingly❀. Hunt was a gifted actor, and an accomplished singer. She was also the composer of about 50 songs including one she wrote in the early 1960s, ahead of its time, on the subject of same sex equality in love and marriage – later a hit in the US in the 1980s.
In 1944 she was voted one of the Hollywood ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. However, like others in the industry who refused to recant their earnestly-held political convictions, roles for Hunt dried up. First she was relegated to B movies, then not even that and her film career was effectively over by the time she was 40. From the ’50s, Hunt, like many other Hollywooders including Ronald Reagan (180 degrees apart from her politically) found TV work her only reliable source of income and expression.
Peacenik, social activist
Marsha Hunt, friend to all Democratic presidents from FDR on, was and still is an activist with a capital ’A’. Outside of acting Marsha has pursued a concern for a host of vital humanitarian issues on the global stage—pollution, poverty, peace and population growth—as well as actively working against the blight of social homelessness and supporting the right of same sex equality. Hunt has never lacked for courage or for determination in anything she has done. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The 2014 film documentary, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, illustrates the 60-plus years (and ongoing) of active international work (world hunger campaigns, a staunch supporter of the United Nations, UNICEF and other UN humanitarian projects, etc) by a woman known to admirers as a “Planet Patriot“.
Today despite her great chronological seniority she is as committed to and active in the causes of ordinary people as she ever was! Marsha is still in her own principled way making a difference for the planet. Marsha Hunt, talented actor, indefatigable activist, world citizen, a refined woman of principles, a great humanitarian and advocate for universal civil rights – a truly great American.
﹌﹌﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹋﹋﹌﹌﹌﹋﹋ ⌺ Hunt is the only surviving member of the Committee for the First Amendment ❀ whilst other, more illustrious Hollywood liberals abjectly backed down in the onslaught of HUAC bullying, Hunt was one of the very few ‘Tinseltown’ stars to put her film career on the line by refusing to apologise for her support of the blacklisted ‘Ten’ and for her role in progressive activist causes
MVH at 95
