Hollywood’s one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s, Marsha Hunt,  who did a variety of works from Laurence Olivier to Andy Griffith, in a career that was briefly interrupted by the McCarthy era blacklist has passed away at the age of 104. 

The famous actress has appeared in more than 100 movies and TV shows, and took her last breath at her home in Sherman Oaks, California, said Roger Memos, the writer-director of the 2015 documentary "Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity."

She was born in Chicago and moved to Hollywood in 1935. Over the next 15 years, she acted in scores of movies, including "Easy Living," a comedy directed by Preston Sturges, and the Olivier and Greer Garson-starring rendition of "Pride and Prejudice."

When MGM dubbed her "Hollywood's Youngest Character Actress," she was much under 40. She was also sufficiently well-known by the early 1950s to grace the cover of Life magazine and seemed poised to succeed in the brand-new medium of television when all of a sudden, as she recounted in 1996, "the work dried up."

Hunt voiced his disapproval of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

She discovered the explanation from her agent: it had been disclosed that she attended a peace conference in Stockholm and other allegedly dubious events by the communist-hunting Red Channels journal. Hunt travelled to Washington in 1947 to oppose the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was conducting a witch hunt for communists in the film business, alongside Hollywood luminaries Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, and Danny Kaye.

"I'd made 54 movies in my first 16 years in Hollywood," Hunt said in 1996. "In the last 45 years, I've made eight. That shows what a blacklist can do to a career."

Hunt focused on the theatre, where the blacklist was not enforced, until the late 1950s, when she started to sporadically acquire film work again. She participated in the Broadway productions of "The Devil's Disciple," "Legend of Sarah," and "The Paisley Convertible," as well as the touring companies of "The Cocktail Party," "The Lady's Not for Burning," and "The Tunnel of Love."

Daughter of an insurance executive and a vocal teacher, Marcia Virginia Hunt (she later changed the spelling of her first name) was born in Chicago and raised in New York City. Before making her feature film debut, Hunt worked as a model and studied acting. She is slim and fashionable with a lovely smile and big, expressive eyes.

Jerry Hopper, a director, divorced his wife after a brief marriage. She married the screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr. in 1948; the couple had one daughter, who passed very soon after being born too soon. She lost her husband in 1986.

1935's "The Virginia Judge" was Hunt's debut motion picture. She continued to play subdued characters in a number of Paramount movies, such as "The Accusing Finger" and "Come on Leathernecks," but she told The Associated Press in 2020 that she was sick of playing "nice young things" and pleaded for more challenging roles.

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