Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity (2015)

(On Cable TV, December 2020) Hollywood documentaries are often made about the immensely successful, to cap decades of stardom. Others are made about those who died too young. And then there’s the third category, of actors who left the business, not necessarily on their own terms, and found rich rewarding lives away from the cameras. Marsha Hunt certainly fits that third category, as described in Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity: After a substantial fifteen-year career in Hollywood, she moved to television… and got targeted by the Hollywood blacklist of the early 1950s. Her Hollywood career effectively cut short, she first turned to Broadway or travelling troupes and eventually to philanthropy to become a humanitarian activist on behalf of the United Nations, highlighting various causes and gathering support from entertainment-industry friends. (There’s an interesting contrast here with other creatives whose Hollywood stars dimmed and often ended up in miserable circumstances: Hunt was not abusing substances, didn’t have mental health issues and remained a hard worker no matter the circumstances – which explains how she kept working and remained in generally good spirits throughout the rest of her life.) It’s quite an admirable life, and Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity does what it can to convey it. Alas, the material is often better than the filmmaking skill bringing it to the screen: this is a low-budget presentation and the blunt way the material is delivered doesn’t always do justice to its subject. Still, even knowing the story of her post-Hollywood career can be enough. It’s possible to watch Hunt’s classic movies and wonder at her talent and sex appeal, but you really have to watch Sweet Adversity to understand one of the best second acts in Hollywood history, even if it happened away from Hollywood.