Marsha Hunt (actress, born 1917)

Marsha Hunt
Marsha Hunt in trailer for Cry "Havoc", 1943
Born	Marcia Virginia Hunt (1917-10-17) October 17, 1917 (age 99) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Residence	San Fernando Valley, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Horace Mann School
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1935–2008
Home town	New York City, New York, U.S.
Spouse(s)	Jerry Hopper (1938–1945) Robert Presnell Jr. (1946–1986) (his death)
Children	1

Marsha Virginia Hunt (born October 17, 1917) is a retired American film, stage and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.

Born Marcia Virginia Hunt, on October 17, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois, she later changed the spelling of her first name to Marsha. She was the younger of two girls born to Earl Hunt, who worked as a lawyer, and later, a Social Security Administrator. Minabel Hunt, her mother, worked as a vocal teacher and organist. Hunt recalled many years later,

I lucked into the most fortuitous, warm, constructive kind of family context imaginable. My father was a top scholar, a Phi Beta Kappa. My mother was a voice coach and accompanist of singers in the concert and opera fields. We didn't have the term "liberated woman", but my mother certainly was... They were brought up, both, in the state of Indiana, which is now called the Bible Belt. They were wholesome, they neither smoked nor drank, and they never used the Lord's name in vain. I never heard a four-letter word. It didn't exist in my wholesome family setting.

Hunt's family moved to New York City when she was young and began performing in school plays and church functions. She graduated from the Horace Mann High School for Girls in 1934, at 16.

After graduation, Hunt's parents wanted her to pursue a college degree, but Hunt, unable to "locate a single college or university in the land where you could major in drama before your third year", instead found work modeling for the John Powers Agency and began taking acting classes at the Theodora Irvine Studio for the stage.

In June 1935, at 17, Hunt signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, making her film debut in The Virginia Judge later that same year. Between 1935 and 1938, she made 12 pictures at Paramount and two "loan-outs" at RKO and 20th Century Fox. Among her more notable films from this period was the 1937 western Born to the West, co-starring John Wayne.