Marsha Hunt at 104 is the oldest living actress

Marsha Hunt: The oldest living Hollywood legend

The recent death of Betty White has people talking about older Hollywood stars. Right now to my knowledge Marla Gibbs from The Jeffersons and 227 at 91 is the oldest living active actress. Bill Hayes at 96 is the oldest living active actor and both are currently in the cast of the NBC soap Days of Our Lives. There is an actress who trumps them by age and that is Marsha Hunt.

She was born on October 17, 1917, in Chicago, Illinois, as Marcia Virginia Hunt. In addition to being a retired actress, she was a model and activist, whose career spanned close to 80 years. Marsha has the distinction of being the oldest living and one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema". She is also, at 104, the oldest living member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Marcia Hunt on the blacklist

In the 1950s Hunt was blacklisted by Hollywood film studio executives during the era of McCarthyism. During this time she became active in the prevention of world hunger, and in her later years has supported same-sex marriage, homeless shelters, promoted peace in Third World nations and raised awareness about climate change.

Hunt and her second husband Robert Pressnell were named along with 150 other actors as potential Communist or Communist sympathizers. At this point, the actress could only find sustainable work in television rather than films but being blackballed did not completely stall her career.

Marsha Hunt roles

Hunt appeared in a number of popular films including 1927's Born to the West, Pride and Prejudice (1940), Kid Glove Killer (1942), Cry 'Havoc' and The Human Comedy (both 1943), Raw Deal (1948), The Happy Time (1952), and Johnny Got His Gun (1971).After semi-retirement in 1960, Hunt appeared in small roles in five films and numerous television shows, including Breaking Point and Gunsmoke.

In 1967, she had a leading role in an episode of My Three Sons entitled "The Aunt Who Came To Dinner" as Katie's Aunt Cecile. On February 8, 1988, Hunt appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Anne Jameson in the episode titled "Too Short a Season." She was the wife of an admiral who had taken an age-reversing drug. In 1997, the actress appeared as Ethel Thayer in the Santa Susana Repertory Company's production of On Golden Pond.

The actress portrayed Elizabeth Lyons in 2006 in the film Chloe's Prayer and in 2008, she appeared as Hazel Reedy, in a short film noir, titled The Grand Inquisitor. In 2013, Hunt debuted a clip of a song she wrote four decades earlier about same-sex marriage titled "Here's to All Who Love." It was sung by Glee star Bill A. Jones, and the clip immediately went viral.

Marsha Hunt: Personal life

Marsha's family moved to New York City when she was young, and she began performing in church functions and school plays. She graduated at age 16 in 1934 from the Horace Mann High School for Girls. Marsha and her family were active in the Methodist church and she made this statement regarding her early personal life.

"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".