'Leprosy' of red scare never ended, Hunt says

LOS ANGELES — Marsha Hunt turned 90 last Wednesday, but you'd hardly know it. Her lovely face remains almost wrinkle-free, she is slim and vigorous, and she has total recall of her life in Hollywood, including the infamous studio blacklist that almost killed her career.

Her 89th year has been a busy one. She was a guest of honor at the Noir Film Festival in San Francisco, where one of her films, "Raw Deal," was shown. And she later acted in a short noir drama filmed nearby. "I got it in one take," she says proudly.

Last spring, she recited a traditional poem at the Hollywood Bowl's annual Easter sunrise service. She was supposed to read the selection, but because of an eye ailment she memorized all 96 lines, getting through it "without a net to catch me."

She recently produced an album of pop songs by young Tony London, accompanied by the Page Cavanagh Trio. And she's the subject of three paper-doll collectables dressed in the high-fashion designs she wore on the screen, as well as a coffee-table book, "The Way We Wore," a gallery of her studio fashion photos.

Then there's the fan mail, which pours in because of screenings of her movies on TCM, AMC and European TV.

Hunt talked volubly during a recent interview at the sprawling San Fernando Valley ranch house where she's lived for more than six decades.

The blacklist is not among Hunt's favorite topics of conversation, but she agreed to discuss that dark period in Hollywood history, when congressmen hauled actors, writers and directors into hearings to test whether they were communists. Scores of careers were ruined.

At the time, Hunt was doing a lot of work in this new medium called television.

"I was hot," she recalled. "I did the first Shakespeare that was coast to coast on TV. I was on the cover of Life magazine. I did a lot of talk shows, and three networks offered me my own talk show."

She took time out of her busy schedule for her first visit to Paris, and when she returned, the offers for her own show were rescinded. She soon found the reason: She had been accused of leftist leanings by Red Channels, a publication that targeted supposed communists.

"I had one phony excuse after another, and I realized that I was now a leper," she said. She figures she was targeted because she had spoken out at gatherings that opposed the red hunts, "but none of them had any whiff of communism." She had to wait seven years before the offers started again.