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How Marsha Hunt fought Hollywood blacklisting NewsColony It’s 70 years since Red Channels was published in the USA – a directory of writers, actors and producers alleged to be communists or communist sympathisers. The red scare ended many careers. Now 102, actress Marsha Hunt is almost the last person still alive named in the book. Marsha Hunt never wanted to do anything except act. Born in 1917, she grew up in New York City and remembers going to the theatre with her father when she was five. “It was a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta – probably HMS Pinafore. I turned to my dad and I said I’m going to do that. After that if there was a play I was always in it,” she says. Hunt was in her late teens when she went to Hollywood looking for a film career. She found success quickly: her first film was The Virginia Judge in 1935. She was constantly in work and seemed to have a long career ahead of her – although few of her early films are familiar today. An exception is the 1940 version ...