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Marsha Hunt (singer and novelist)
Encyclopedia
Marsha Hunt is an American singer, novel
ist, actress and model
.
in 1946 and lived in North Philadelphia near 23rd and Columbia then in Germantown and Mount Airy for the first 13 years of her life. Hunt still remembers Philadelphia with affection, particularly the "Philadelphia steak sandwiches and the bad boys on the basketball court".
Hunt's mother Inez was her primary parent and worked as a librarian in a local library. Hunt's father Blaire Theodore Hunt, Jr., was one of America's first black psychiatrists but he did not live with Hunt and she found out when she was 15 years old that he had committed suicide three years previously. Hunt was brought up by her mother, her aunt and her grandmother, three strong, but very different women. Hunt describes her mother Ikey as "extremely intelligent and education-minded", her Aunt Thelma as "extremely Catholic but very glamorous" and her grandmother Edna as an "extremely aggressive...ass-kicking" independent Southern woman.
While Hunt was poor, she credits that experience with teaching her not to be materialistic. Hunt's family put a great deal of emphasis on academic performance, and Hunt did very well in school. In 1960 her family moved to Kensington so that her brother and sister could attend Oakland High School
and prepare to attend the University of California, Berkeley
, which Hunt still regards as home.
Hunt also went to Berkeley, in 1964, where she joined Jerry Rubin
on protest marches against the Vietnam War
. In her book Undefeated she recalled that during her time at Berkeley "were sitting in for the Free Speech Movement, smoking pot, experimenting with acid, lining up to take Oriental philosophy courses, daring to cohabit, and going to dances in San Francisco."
and for a time lived in Edinburgh
. Hunt says that in London in the 1960s anything seemed possible.
of the Soft Machine
, and for a brief time was considered as a potential lead singer for the band in order to allow Robert Wyatt to concentrate on drumming. Hunt was having trouble getting a visa extension to stay in England and proposed to Ratledge. Ratledge and Hunt were married
on April 15, 1967. The Soft Machine were heavily booked and there was no time for a honeymoon, but Ratledge and Hunt were able to spend two months together before the band headed for France
later that year. Hunt said in 1991 that she and Ratledge never held hands and never kissed but that "...he comes for Easter. But that's what we called married." While the two have remained good friends, Hunt says the secret to a happy marriage is to "separate immediately." When Hunt and Ratledge reached their 40th wedding anniversary, Hunt called Ratledge up and said, jokingly, "We should renew our vows."
Although Hunt indicates that she had no great musical talent, she worked as a singer for 18 months after arriving in England. In February 1967 Hunt took a singing job with Alexis Korner
's trio Free at Last so that she could earn her fare back home. She didn't use it, but remained, and in 1968 joined the group Ferris Wheel
. That same year, Hunt achieved national fame in England
when she appeared as "Dionne" in the rock musical Hair
, a box office smash on The London Stage
. Hunt only had two lines of dialog in Hair, but she attracted a lot of media attention and her photo appeared in many newspapers and magazines. Her photograph was used on the poster and playbill of the original London production, photographed by Justin de Villeneuve
. Hunt says that the role was a perfect fit for her, expressing who she actually was. Hunt was one of three Americans featured in the London show, and when the show began she had no contract to perform. When the show opened she was featured in so many stories that she was offered a contract right away.
Hunt played at the Isle of Wight
music festival in 1969 with her backup band White Trash. Hunt's first single, a cover of Dr John's "Walk on Gilded Splinters" was released on Track Records
in 1969; it became a minor hit. An album, Woman Child (in Germany released unter the title "Desdemona"), followed in 1971. In May 1977 an album with disco songs was released in Germany with the title "Marsha". It was recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and produced by Pete Belotte (coproducer with Giorgio Moroder of many Donna Summer albums)
Hunt met Marc Bolan
in 1969 when she went to the studio where Bolan's group was recording "Unicorn". Tony Visconti said that when Bolan and Hunt met, "[y]ou could see the shafts of light pouring out of their eyes into each other.... We finished the session unusually early, and Marc and Marsha walked out into the night hand in hand." According to Hunt, the relationship between the two was based on more than physical attraction, though she also recalled that her commercial visibility put her at opposition to Bolan's philosophy that "the serious art of music...was validated by obscurity."
In 1973, as a member of a panel organized by British magazine Melody Maker
to discuss women in music and options open to black women, Hunt suggested that black women needed to make use of the "side-door" in the industry, entering as "the statuary representative" before they could make music under their own terms.
In addition to her husband, Korner and Bolan, Hunt was professionally associated with such musicians as Long John Baldry
, John Mayall
and Elton John
.
Vogue
's January 1969 issue. Almost 40 years later Hunt again posed nude for Litchfield, recreating the pose for her Vogue Magazine cover five weeks after she had had her right breast and lymph glands removed to halt the spread of cancer. The photo appeared on the cover of her 2005 book, Undefeated, about her battle with cancer. She was pleased to work with the photographer under such differing circumstances, though in her autobiography she expressed confusion as to why the photo has been so often reprinted. Hunt has also been photographed by Lewis Morley
, Horace Ove
, and Robert Taylor.
when the Rolling Stones asked Hunt to pose for an ad for "Honky Tonk Women
", which she refused to do because she "didn't want to look like [she'd] just been had by all the Rolling Stones." Jagger called her later, and their nine or ten month affair began. According to Christopher Sanford's book Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight, Hunt told journalist Frankie McGowan that Jagger's shyness and awkwardness won her over, but that their relationship was conducted mostly in private because their social scenes were very different. In London, November 1970, Hunt gave birth to Jagger's first and her only child, Karis. According to Hunt, the pair planned the child but never intended to live together. According to Tony Sanchez in Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, Jagger considered proposing to Hunt but didn't because he didn't think he loved Hunt enough to spend the rest of his life with her, while Hunt, for her part, didn't think they could compatibly cohabit.
When Karis was two years old, Hunt asked the courts for an affiliation order against Jagger and eventually settled out of court. Jagger, who called the suit "silly", has been close to Karis since then; he took her on holiday with his family when she was a teenager, attended her Yale
graduation and her 2000 wedding, and he was at the hospital for the birth of her son in 2004. As of 2008, he continued to see her and her family. Citing the binding tie of a child, Hunt says she still sees Jagger, but has a closer relationship with Jagger's mother. In 1991, Hunt indicated that she left the door open for Jagger to come back to his child and admired the fact that he did.
In 2008, Hunt was asked about the story that appeared in this article in Wikipedia (without a citation) that she met Jagger at a party in the Sixties and told him she wanted to have his baby. "You must have read that on the Internet", says Hunt. "One reason I haven't had it removed is that it is proof that the Internet is full of absolute bullshit. Ridiculous things have been written about me so often that we won't even go there."
" there was immediate speculation that the song referred to Hunt or to soul singer Claudia Lennear
. In her 1985 autobiography, Real Life, Hunt acknowledged that "Brown Sugar" is about her, among a few other songs, a fact she reiterated in her 2006 book Undefeated. When Hunt was asked how she felt about the song for an interview with the Irish Times in 2008, Hunt said "it doesn't make me feel any way at all."
, Real Life: The Story of a Survivor. She found the process of writing more difficult than she expected, but did not stop there, continuing in 1996 with another autobiography, Repossessing Ernestine: A Granddaughter Uncovers the Secret History of Her American Family, about her search for her father's mother Ernestine who was placed in an asylum for nearly 50 years. After Hunt's father committed suicide when she was twelve years old, Hunt's contact with her father's family was sporadic. Hunt tracked down her father's father Blair Hunt shortly before he died in 1978 to find him living sedately in a seedy part of town with his companion of 60 years. Hunt discovered that her grandfather had been a public school administrator and a leading member of Memphis's black community. Blair Hunt talked about his "poor dear sick wife" who he had "put away" many years before. Hunt discovered that her father's mother, Ernestine, had been born in 1896 as a free black and that she grew up in Memphis, "an intelligent, remarkably beautiful young woman who excelled in school and was greatly envied for her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair." Hunt tracked her grandmother down to a rundown nursing home, and although Hunt was unable to discover why Ernestine spent 50 years behind bars, Hunt wrote that the reasons may have had more to do with racism and sexism than insanity.
In 2005 Hunt released her memoir
about her battle with cancer, Undefeated.
, in 1990
about a woman who grew up to join a singing group reminiscent of The Supremes
before dying an early death. Set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black neighbourhood in the 1950s and 1960s. The book also deals with stardom in the music business and some people's inability, despite their riches, to make their own American Dream
come true and to lead fulfilled lives. Hunt indicates that within her novel, all the characters are victims who are also guilty, a reflection of real life where "[w]e get hurt, but we're also hurting each other all the time." Hunt wrote Joy while touring England with a group performing Othello and said her fellow actors made fun of her while she was writing the book; given her reputation, she feels, they may have thought her an aspiring Joan Collins
. Hunt says Joy is also about the colorism
that existed within black society at the time, where girls with fairer skin and longer hair were preferred to girls with kinky hair and more stereotypically Black characteristics. Hunt said that living in England and exploring its accents taught her how beautiful Black language was, a "culturally important" feature she preserved in her novel.
Hunt's second novel, Free, published in 1992
, tells the story of freed slaves and their children living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1913. Hunt's 1998 novel Like Venus Fading is inspired by the lives of Adelaide Hall
, known as the "lightly-tanned Venus", Josephine Baker
, and Dorothy Dandridge
.
Hunt wrote her first four books living in isolation in a remote hideaway in France
called La montagne. With no company but a barn cat who came to eat each morning and the people she saw once a day at a near patisserie, she was inspired to write by silence and boredom.
, Hunt staged a one-woman protest, picketing Charlotte Square about the "shoddy administration" of the Festival. The director of the festival was fired in the aftermath of her protest.
that she considers her life work. She indicates that no one alive can share her perspective on the matter, "because he and I shared something - black Americans who came to London were transformed and re-packaged for the US, although I never became successful there and he did." No release date has been given.
In 1994, Hunt performed a one-woman play in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival playing Baby Palatine, a 60-year-old woman who becomes the wardrobe mistress to a female pop group. The play is based on Hunt's novel Joy. Hunt was directed in the play by her daughter Karis Jagger, who says that it was her mother's idea. Jagger says that the pair "spent six weeks rehearsing in France. Because the weather was so good we marked out the shape of the stage with my teddy bears and rehearsed in the garden."
(1972) and Britannia Hospital
(1982) directed by Lindsay Anderson
. In 1990 Hunt played Bianca in the BBC
television production of Othello
directed by Trevor Nunn
.
documentary film-maker Alan Gilsenan
made God Bless America consisting of six American cities seen through the eyes of six American authors, Hunt was invited to participate. Her participation resulted in Marsha Hunt's Philadelphia. According to Gilsenan, Hunt attributes the success of American democracy and capitalism to the crime of slavery, a crime which must be understood if America is to have peace. Hunt fell in love with Gilsenan and moved to the Wicklow mountains near Dublin with him, where in 1999 she helped him fight colon cancer, drawing on her own experiences with the disease. Hunt is no longer romantically involved with Gilsenan, who has since married and fathered a child, but as of 2008 still sees him.
Hunt has also been the subject of a documentary, Beating Breast Cancer on ITV
, broadcast on 26 September 2005.
, because she felt that the Irish are more supportive and comfortable with illness whereas in the USA her treatment would be impersonal. Hunt decided to have a complete mastectomy with no following reconstruction. She says, "Reconstruction - as if the breast is miraculously put back to the way it was. In fact, pretty much all you get is your cleavage back; you don't get any feeling or sensitivity.... They take muscles from your back, skin from your thighs, fat from your stomach. You had a breast removed, but the rest of you was fine. Now half your body is hacked about - and for what?" The day of her operation Hunt wrote a note on her breast to the surgical team, telling them to have fun, make sure they took the right breast off and drew them a flower.
Once the operation was over Hunt says she did not mourn the loss of her breast, but felt happiness that the cancer had been removed. She emphasizes positive action and states that the surgery left her a "battle scar" that makes her feel sexier, as it is a memento of what she has survived.
In July 2007, Hunt got to talking about her breast removal with a twelve year old boy and told the boy that now she is like the Amazons
of old who would have a breast removed so that when they went into battle they could use their bow without their breast getting in the way when they let their arrows fly.
After her mastectomy, she contracted the superbug MRSA and had to be treated with Zyrox. She also had chemotherapy
. Not wanting to wait for her hair to fall out naturally, she decided to control it herself, throwing a party where her guests took turns cutting off locks of her hair.
The Irish Independent
reported on August 27, 2008 that Hunt stood on a table at the opening of the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin to let everyone see that she had survived third-stage breast cancer after a treatment of chemotherapy, radiation
and Herceptin therapy at the hospital.
where she owns a home in the countryside about 60 miles from Paris.
: Melangian.
Hunt said in 1991 that there is a pain inflicted by the black community on itself, which it fears to communicate openly. She also says that living overseas for most of her life has made her a foreigner in the USA. She said, "I'm scared to walk through Harlem... more scared than you, because if I walked through Harlem with the weird shoes and the weird accent, I'd get my butt kicked faster than you. In a way, I'm the betrayer."
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist, actress and model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
.
Early life
Hunt was born in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
in 1946 and lived in North Philadelphia near 23rd and Columbia then in Germantown and Mount Airy for the first 13 years of her life. Hunt still remembers Philadelphia with affection, particularly the "Philadelphia steak sandwiches and the bad boys on the basketball court".
Hunt's mother Inez was her primary parent and worked as a librarian in a local library. Hunt's father Blaire Theodore Hunt, Jr., was one of America's first black psychiatrists but he did not live with Hunt and she found out when she was 15 years old that he had committed suicide three years previously. Hunt was brought up by her mother, her aunt and her grandmother, three strong, but very different women. Hunt describes her mother Ikey as "extremely intelligent and education-minded", her Aunt Thelma as "extremely Catholic but very glamorous" and her grandmother Edna as an "extremely aggressive...ass-kicking" independent Southern woman.
While Hunt was poor, she credits that experience with teaching her not to be materialistic. Hunt's family put a great deal of emphasis on academic performance, and Hunt did very well in school. In 1960 her family moved to Kensington so that her brother and sister could attend Oakland High School
Oakland High School (California)
Oakland Senior High School is a public high school in California. Established in 1869, it is the oldest high school in Oakland, California and the sixth oldest high school in the state.-Background:...
and prepare to attend the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, which Hunt still regards as home.
Hunt also went to Berkeley, in 1964, where she joined Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin
Jerry Rubin was an American social activist during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, he became a successful businessman.-Early life:...
on protest marches against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. In her book Undefeated she recalled that during her time at Berkeley "were sitting in for the Free Speech Movement, smoking pot, experimenting with acid, lining up to take Oriental philosophy courses, daring to cohabit, and going to dances in San Francisco."
Move to London
In February 1966 Hunt moved to BritainUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and for a time lived in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. Hunt says that in London in the 1960s anything seemed possible.
Marriage to Mike Ratledge
In late 1966 Hunt met Mike RatledgeMike Ratledge
Michael Roland "Mike" Ratledge is a British musician. Ratledge was part of the Canterbury scene and a long-time member of Soft Machine.-Biography and career:...
of the Soft Machine
Soft Machine
Soft Machine were an English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the central bands in the Canterbury scene, and helped pioneer the progressive rock genre...
, and for a brief time was considered as a potential lead singer for the band in order to allow Robert Wyatt to concentrate on drumming. Hunt was having trouble getting a visa extension to stay in England and proposed to Ratledge. Ratledge and Hunt were married
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
on April 15, 1967. The Soft Machine were heavily booked and there was no time for a honeymoon, but Ratledge and Hunt were able to spend two months together before the band headed for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
later that year. Hunt said in 1991 that she and Ratledge never held hands and never kissed but that "...he comes for Easter. But that's what we called married." While the two have remained good friends, Hunt says the secret to a happy marriage is to "separate immediately." When Hunt and Ratledge reached their 40th wedding anniversary, Hunt called Ratledge up and said, jokingly, "We should renew our vows."
Music
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
's trio Free at Last so that she could earn her fare back home. She didn't use it, but remained, and in 1968 joined the group Ferris Wheel
The Ferris Wheel (band)
The Ferris Wheel were a British rock and soul band, who have been described as "one of England's great lost musical treasures of the mid- to late '60s" and as "one of the most popular club acts" of the time. They released two albums, Can't Break the Habit in 1967 and Ferris Wheel in 1970, the...
. That same year, Hunt achieved national fame in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
when she appeared as "Dionne" in the rock musical Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
, a box office smash on The London Stage
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
. Hunt only had two lines of dialog in Hair, but she attracted a lot of media attention and her photo appeared in many newspapers and magazines. Her photograph was used on the poster and playbill of the original London production, photographed by Justin de Villeneuve
Justin de Villeneuve
Justin de Villeneuve was Twiggy's manager from 1966-1973. He was born in Edmonton, London as Nigel John Davies.Justin de Villeneuve worked as a Mayfair hairdresser before meeting Twiggy as a teenager. They became a couple, and as her career as a model took off, he became her manager and helped to...
. Hunt says that the role was a perfect fit for her, expressing who she actually was. Hunt was one of three Americans featured in the London show, and when the show began she had no contract to perform. When the show opened she was featured in so many stories that she was offered a contract right away.
Hunt played at the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
music festival in 1969 with her backup band White Trash. Hunt's first single, a cover of Dr John's "Walk on Gilded Splinters" was released on Track Records
Track Records
Track Records is an English record label founded in London in 1966 by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, then managers of hard rock band The Who. The most successful artists whose work appeared on the Track label were The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Thunderclap...
in 1969; it became a minor hit. An album, Woman Child (in Germany released unter the title "Desdemona"), followed in 1971. In May 1977 an album with disco songs was released in Germany with the title "Marsha". It was recorded at Musicland Studios in Munich and produced by Pete Belotte (coproducer with Giorgio Moroder of many Donna Summer albums)
Hunt met Marc Bolan
Marc Bolan
Marc Bolan was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He is best known as the founder, frontman, lead singer & guitarist for T. Rex, but also a successful solo artist...
in 1969 when she went to the studio where Bolan's group was recording "Unicorn". Tony Visconti said that when Bolan and Hunt met, "[y]ou could see the shafts of light pouring out of their eyes into each other.... We finished the session unusually early, and Marc and Marsha walked out into the night hand in hand." According to Hunt, the relationship between the two was based on more than physical attraction, though she also recalled that her commercial visibility put her at opposition to Bolan's philosophy that "the serious art of music...was validated by obscurity."
In 1973, as a member of a panel organized by British magazine Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
to discuss women in music and options open to black women, Hunt suggested that black women needed to make use of the "side-door" in the industry, entering as "the statuary representative" before they could make music under their own terms.
In addition to her husband, Korner and Bolan, Hunt was professionally associated with such musicians as Long John Baldry
Long John Baldry
John William "Long John" Baldry was an English and Canadian blues singer and a voice actor. He sang with many British musicians, with Rod Stewart and Elton John appearing in bands led by Baldry in the 1960s. He enjoyed pop success in the UK where Let the Heartaches Begin reached No...
, John Mayall
John Mayall
John Mayall, OBE is an English blues singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, whose musical career spans over fifty years...
and Elton John
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE, Hon DMus is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor...
.
Modeling
Three months after Hair opened, Hunt was on the cover of British high fashion magazine Queen, the first black model to appear on their cover. In 1968, Hunt posed nude for photographer Patrick Lichfield after opening night for Hair and the photo appeared on the cover of BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
's January 1969 issue. Almost 40 years later Hunt again posed nude for Litchfield, recreating the pose for her Vogue Magazine cover five weeks after she had had her right breast and lymph glands removed to halt the spread of cancer. The photo appeared on the cover of her 2005 book, Undefeated, about her battle with cancer. She was pleased to work with the photographer under such differing circumstances, though in her autobiography she expressed confusion as to why the photo has been so often reprinted. Hunt has also been photographed by Lewis Morley
Lewis Morley
Lewis Morley, born in Hong Kong, 1925, to English and Chinese parents, is a photographer. He was interned in Stanley Internment Camp during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong between 1941 and 1945, when he was released and went to the United Kingdom with his family. He studied at Twickenham Art...
, Horace Ove
Horace Ove
Horace Ové Horace Ové Horace Ové (born 1939, Trinidad, is a British filmmaker, painter and writer and one of the leading black independent film-makers to emerge in Britain since the post-war period....
, and Robert Taylor.
Relationship with Mick Jagger
Hunt said in 1991 that she met Mick JaggerMick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
when the Rolling Stones asked Hunt to pose for an ad for "Honky Tonk Women
Honky Tonk Women
"Honky Tonk Women" is a 1969 hit song by The Rolling Stones. Released as a single on 4 July 1969 in the UK and a week later in the US, it topped the charts in both nations.-Inspiration and Recording:...
", which she refused to do because she "didn't want to look like [she'd] just been had by all the Rolling Stones." Jagger called her later, and their nine or ten month affair began. According to Christopher Sanford's book Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight, Hunt told journalist Frankie McGowan that Jagger's shyness and awkwardness won her over, but that their relationship was conducted mostly in private because their social scenes were very different. In London, November 1970, Hunt gave birth to Jagger's first and her only child, Karis. According to Hunt, the pair planned the child but never intended to live together. According to Tony Sanchez in Up and Down with the Rolling Stones, Jagger considered proposing to Hunt but didn't because he didn't think he loved Hunt enough to spend the rest of his life with her, while Hunt, for her part, didn't think they could compatibly cohabit.
When Karis was two years old, Hunt asked the courts for an affiliation order against Jagger and eventually settled out of court. Jagger, who called the suit "silly", has been close to Karis since then; he took her on holiday with his family when she was a teenager, attended her Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
graduation and her 2000 wedding, and he was at the hospital for the birth of her son in 2004. As of 2008, he continued to see her and her family. Citing the binding tie of a child, Hunt says she still sees Jagger, but has a closer relationship with Jagger's mother. In 1991, Hunt indicated that she left the door open for Jagger to come back to his child and admired the fact that he did.
In 2008, Hunt was asked about the story that appeared in this article in Wikipedia (without a citation) that she met Jagger at a party in the Sixties and told him she wanted to have his baby. "You must have read that on the Internet", says Hunt. "One reason I haven't had it removed is that it is proof that the Internet is full of absolute bullshit. Ridiculous things have been written about me so often that we won't even go there."
Brown Sugar
Christopher Sanford writes in his book Mick Jagger that when the Rolling Stones released the song "Brown SugarBrown Sugar (song)
"Brown Sugar" is a song by The Rolling Stones. It is the opening track and lead single from the English rock band's 1971 album Sticky Fingers...
" there was immediate speculation that the song referred to Hunt or to soul singer Claudia Lennear
Claudia Lennear
Claudia Lennear is an American soul singer who has worked with many acts including Ike and Tina Turner, Humble Pie and Joe Cocker. She recorded a solo album entitled Phew! in 1973.She was part of a trio of backup singers for Delaney and Bonnie, that also included Rita Coolidge...
. In her 1985 autobiography, Real Life, Hunt acknowledged that "Brown Sugar" is about her, among a few other songs, a fact she reiterated in her 2006 book Undefeated. When Hunt was asked how she felt about the song for an interview with the Irish Times in 2008, Hunt said "it doesn't make me feel any way at all."
Autobiographer
Hunt began writing in 1985, and her first book was her 1986 autobiographyAutobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, Real Life: The Story of a Survivor. She found the process of writing more difficult than she expected, but did not stop there, continuing in 1996 with another autobiography, Repossessing Ernestine: A Granddaughter Uncovers the Secret History of Her American Family, about her search for her father's mother Ernestine who was placed in an asylum for nearly 50 years. After Hunt's father committed suicide when she was twelve years old, Hunt's contact with her father's family was sporadic. Hunt tracked down her father's father Blair Hunt shortly before he died in 1978 to find him living sedately in a seedy part of town with his companion of 60 years. Hunt discovered that her grandfather had been a public school administrator and a leading member of Memphis's black community. Blair Hunt talked about his "poor dear sick wife" who he had "put away" many years before. Hunt discovered that her father's mother, Ernestine, had been born in 1896 as a free black and that she grew up in Memphis, "an intelligent, remarkably beautiful young woman who excelled in school and was greatly envied for her pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair." Hunt tracked her grandmother down to a rundown nursing home, and although Hunt was unable to discover why Ernestine spent 50 years behind bars, Hunt wrote that the reasons may have had more to do with racism and sexism than insanity.
In 2005 Hunt released her memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
about her battle with cancer, Undefeated.
Novelist
Hunt published her first novel, JoyJoy (novel)
Joy is a novel by Marsha Hunt about the relationship between two African American women which is based on secrets, lies, and delusion. Mainly set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black...
, in 1990
1990 in literature
The year 1990 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*J. K. Rowling gets the idea for Harry Potter while on a train ride from Manchester to London. She says "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed...
about a woman who grew up to join a singing group reminiscent of The Supremes
The Supremes
The Supremes, an American female singing group, were the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.Originally founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, The Supremes' repertoire included doo-wop, pop, soul, Broadway show tunes, psychedelic soul, and disco...
before dying an early death. Set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black neighbourhood in the 1950s and 1960s. The book also deals with stardom in the music business and some people's inability, despite their riches, to make their own American Dream
American Dream
The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...
come true and to lead fulfilled lives. Hunt indicates that within her novel, all the characters are victims who are also guilty, a reflection of real life where "[w]e get hurt, but we're also hurting each other all the time." Hunt wrote Joy while touring England with a group performing Othello and said her fellow actors made fun of her while she was writing the book; given her reputation, she feels, they may have thought her an aspiring Joan Collins
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE , is an English actress, author, and columnist. Born in Paddington and raised in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she made her stage debut in A Doll's House and after attending school, she was classically trained as an actress...
. Hunt says Joy is also about the colorism
Colorism
Colorism is prejudice or discrimination in which human beings are accorded differing social treatment based on skin color. The preference often gets translated into economic status because of opportunities for work. Colorism can be found across the world...
that existed within black society at the time, where girls with fairer skin and longer hair were preferred to girls with kinky hair and more stereotypically Black characteristics. Hunt said that living in England and exploring its accents taught her how beautiful Black language was, a "culturally important" feature she preserved in her novel.
Hunt's second novel, Free, published in 1992
1992 in literature
The year 1992 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Ben Aaronovitch - Transit*Julia Álvarez - How the García Girls Lost Their Accents*Paul Auster - Leviathan*Iain Banks - The Crow Road...
, tells the story of freed slaves and their children living in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1913. Hunt's 1998 novel Like Venus Fading is inspired by the lives of Adelaide Hall
Adelaide Hall
Adelaide Hall was an American-born U.K.-based jazz singer and entertainer.Hall was born in Brooklyn, New York and was taught to sing by her father...
, known as the "lightly-tanned Venus", Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
, and Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress...
.
Hunt wrote her first four books living in isolation in a remote hideaway in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
called La montagne. With no company but a barn cat who came to eat each morning and the people she saw once a day at a near patisserie, she was inspired to write by silence and boredom.
Editor
In 1999 Hunt sought a job of writer-in-residence at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison and later collected selected writings from the prisoners and edited The Junk Yard: Voices From An Irish Prison. The book contains fifteen stories divided into five sections: Childhood, Family Life, The Score, Criminal Life and Prison Life. One publisher was critical of the repetitive themes of urban poverty, addiction, and life in prison, but Hunt responded by noting that it is worthy to consider why the inmates had such similar tales. The Junk Yard: Voices From An Irish Prison became a number one bestseller in Ireland in 1999.Activist
During the 1997 Book Festival in EdinburghEdinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Hunt staged a one-woman protest, picketing Charlotte Square about the "shoddy administration" of the Festival. The director of the festival was fired in the aftermath of her protest.
Current projects
Hunt has been working on a book about Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
that she considers her life work. She indicates that no one alive can share her perspective on the matter, "because he and I shared something - black Americans who came to London were transformed and re-packaged for the US, although I never became successful there and he did." No release date has been given.
Theater
In 1971 Hunt played Bianca in Catch My Soul, the rock and roll stage version of Othello produced by Jack Good. In 1975 Hunt appeared as Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth. In 1991 Hunt appeared as Nurse Logan in the world premier of Arthur Miller's The Ride Down Mount Morgan at London's Wyndham's Theatre. Hunt became a member of the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.In 1994, Hunt performed a one-woman play in Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival playing Baby Palatine, a 60-year-old woman who becomes the wardrobe mistress to a female pop group. The play is based on Hunt's novel Joy. Hunt was directed in the play by her daughter Karis Jagger, who says that it was her mother's idea. Jagger says that the pair "spent six weeks rehearsing in France. Because the weather was so good we marked out the shape of the stage with my teddy bears and rehearsed in the garden."
Film
Hunt's film career included appearances in Dracula AD 1972Dracula AD 1972
Dracula A.D. 1972 is a 1972 Hammer Horror film directed by Alan Gibson, written by Don Houghton and starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Stephanie Beacham. Unlike earlier films in the Hammer Dracula series, Dracula A.D...
(1972) and Britannia Hospital
Britannia Hospital
Britannia Hospital is a 1982 black comedy film by British director Lindsay Anderson which targets the National Health Service and contemporary British society...
(1982) directed by Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
. In 1990 Hunt played Bianca in the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
television production of Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
directed by Trevor Nunn
Trevor Nunn
Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...
.
Documentaries
In 1997, when IrishIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
documentary film-maker Alan Gilsenan
Alan Gilsenan
Alan Gilsenan, Irish writer, director and film-maker.A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin - he won First Class Honours in Modern English and Sociology - Gilsenan received the inaugural A.J. Leventhal Scholarship...
made God Bless America consisting of six American cities seen through the eyes of six American authors, Hunt was invited to participate. Her participation resulted in Marsha Hunt's Philadelphia. According to Gilsenan, Hunt attributes the success of American democracy and capitalism to the crime of slavery, a crime which must be understood if America is to have peace. Hunt fell in love with Gilsenan and moved to the Wicklow mountains near Dublin with him, where in 1999 she helped him fight colon cancer, drawing on her own experiences with the disease. Hunt is no longer romantically involved with Gilsenan, who has since married and fathered a child, but as of 2008 still sees him.
Hunt has also been the subject of a documentary, Beating Breast Cancer on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
, broadcast on 26 September 2005.
Battle with cancer
In late 2004, Hunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and told to have surgery to remove her right breast and her lymph nodes. Hunt postponed seeking treatment for five months, later wondering if she would have faced first stage rather than third stage cancer had she not. When she chose to have surgery, she decided to have it done in IrelandIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, because she felt that the Irish are more supportive and comfortable with illness whereas in the USA her treatment would be impersonal. Hunt decided to have a complete mastectomy with no following reconstruction. She says, "Reconstruction - as if the breast is miraculously put back to the way it was. In fact, pretty much all you get is your cleavage back; you don't get any feeling or sensitivity.... They take muscles from your back, skin from your thighs, fat from your stomach. You had a breast removed, but the rest of you was fine. Now half your body is hacked about - and for what?" The day of her operation Hunt wrote a note on her breast to the surgical team, telling them to have fun, make sure they took the right breast off and drew them a flower.
Once the operation was over Hunt says she did not mourn the loss of her breast, but felt happiness that the cancer had been removed. She emphasizes positive action and states that the surgery left her a "battle scar" that makes her feel sexier, as it is a memento of what she has survived.
In July 2007, Hunt got to talking about her breast removal with a twelve year old boy and told the boy that now she is like the Amazons
Amazons
The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...
of old who would have a breast removed so that when they went into battle they could use their bow without their breast getting in the way when they let their arrows fly.
After her mastectomy, she contracted the superbug MRSA and had to be treated with Zyrox. She also had chemotherapy
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with an antineoplastic drug or with a combination of such drugs into a standardized treatment regimen....
. Not wanting to wait for her hair to fall out naturally, she decided to control it herself, throwing a party where her guests took turns cutting off locks of her hair.
The Irish Independent
Irish Independent
The Irish Independent is Ireland's largest-selling daily newspaper that is published in both compact and broadsheet formats. It is the flagship publication of Independent News & Media.-History:...
reported on August 27, 2008 that Hunt stood on a table at the opening of the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin to let everyone see that she had survived third-stage breast cancer after a treatment of chemotherapy, radiation
Radiation
In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...
and Herceptin therapy at the hospital.
Personal life
Hunt says that the biggest misconception people have about her is that she is wealthy, though she describes herself as "rich in spirit". Hunt has been true to her belief that wealth is not necessary for happiness and has lived the "writing life" for last two decades. Hunt enjoys the solitude of living on her own and finds that being single means she has encounters and experiences that she wouldn't have if she were part of a couple, where others might choose not to intrude and where she would have to coordinate her schedule with another. Hunt has lived in Ireland since 1995. She also lives in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
where she owns a home in the countryside about 60 miles from Paris.
Black/American Identity
When Hunt came to live in Europe she found that people there called her an American, not an African-American or Black. She herself describes her skin color as "oak with a hint of maple", and notes that "[o]f the various races I know I comprise—African, American Indian, German Jew and Irish—only the African was acknowledged." Hunt invented her own word to describe herself, based on the French word melange (mixture) and the word melaninMelanin
Melanin is a pigment that is ubiquitous in nature, being found in most organisms . In animals melanin pigments are derivatives of the amino acid tyrosine. The most common form of biological melanin is eumelanin, a brown-black polymer of dihydroxyindole carboxylic acids, and their reduced forms...
: Melangian.
Hunt said in 1991 that there is a pain inflicted by the black community on itself, which it fears to communicate openly. She also says that living overseas for most of her life has made her a foreigner in the USA. She said, "I'm scared to walk through Harlem... more scared than you, because if I walked through Harlem with the weird shoes and the weird accent, I'd get my butt kicked faster than you. In a way, I'm the betrayer."
External links
- Marsha Hunt at HorrorStars