Hollywood blacklist
In 1945, Hunt was invited to join the board of the Screen Actors Guild.
Disturbed by the actions of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HCUA), Hunt and her husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., became members of the Committee for the First Amendment in 1947. According to NPR, she was – at the time of her 100th birthday – the last surviving member of the group.
On October 26 that same year, aged 30, Hunt took part in Hollywood Fights Back, a star-studded radio program co-written by her husband protesting the activities of HCUA. In 2020, Hunt recalled:
We made our speeches and did a radio programme called Hollywood Fights Back and came home thinking we'd been patriots and had defended our profession. If there were some communists among us that was their business and not ours.
The next day, Hunt flew with a group of about 30 actors, directors, writers, and filmmakers (including John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye) to Washington to protest the actions of HCUA. When she returned to Hollywood just three days later, things had changed. She was asked to denounce her activities if she wanted to find more work; she refused.
In 1950, Hunt was named as a potential Communist or Communist sympathizer (along with 151 other actors, writers, and directors) in the anti-Communist publication Red Channels. The publication claimed that her leanings were made evident by her supposedly subversive actions, including asking the Supreme Court to review the convictions of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo, recording a message in support of a rally organized by the Stop Censorship Committee in 1948, signing a statement in 1946 issued by the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP), and speaking at a rally organized by the Progressive Citizens of America in 1946.
After the publication of Red Channels in 1950, work became scarce for Hunt and Presnell. Hunt said in 2012, "The town turned against us. Just about-face...I was appalled, hurt, shocked that journalism could be so far out in prejudice."
After her 1950 blacklisting, Hunt found most work in television, not film. She appeared in only a handful of films during the next eight years. She later recalled:
Agencies and producers agreed to deem all one hundred and fifty "unemployable". That actually began the blacklist practice, ending all our careers and livelihoods in broadcasting. I don't know that the movie studios would have blacklisted me if Red Channels hadn't named me and made them think I might be a Communist. So to play safe, they put me on their secret blacklist...I think by 1950 it was clear that the whole of show business was under political siege. But, miraculously, the Broadway stage was spared. People were not denied work on the Broadway stage. Movies, radio and television were overcome, but the theatre was not. When I was unable to work in any of the blacklist media, I could always do a play in stock, around the country.
During an interview in 1995, Hunt stated that she believed producer Richard J. Collins was among those responsible for her inclusion on the blacklist. She later said:
I never met Richard Collins, but when he was in some executive post on Bonanza, a friend of mine knew him slightly. At one point, when I was recommended for a script, she was astonished to hear him say, "Don't bother bringing up Marsha Hunt to me. As long as I am connected with this show, she will never work on it."
In 1957, her career began to pick up. She appeared in six films during the next three years before announcing her semi-retirement in 1960.
