Description:
Marsha Hunt was born in Philadelphia, in April 15 1946 and lived in North Philadelphia, then in Germantown and Mount Airy, for the first 13 years of her life. Marsha 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; 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 credits the experience of having been poor with
Marsha Hunt was born in Philadelphia, in April 15 1946 and lived in North Philadelphia, then in Germantown and Mount Airy, for the first 13 years of her life. Marsha 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; 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 credits the experience of having been poor with teaching her not to be materialistic. Her family put a great deal of emphasis on academic performance, and Hunt did very well in school. In 1960, the family moved to Kensington, California, which Hunt still regards as home, so that her brother and sister could attend OaklandHigh School and prepare to attend the University of California, Berkeley. Hunt also went to Berkeley, in 1964, where she joined Jerry Rubin on protest marches against the Vietnam War.
In February 1966, Hunt moved to Britain and for a time lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hunt says that in London in the 1960s anything seemed possible. In late 1966, Hunt met Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine. 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.
Although Marsha 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 did not use it, but remained, and in 1968, joined the group The 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 dialogue 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. She 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.
Marsha 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, “you 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 in opposition to Bolan’s philosophy that “the serious art of music…was validated by obscurity.”
She met Mick Jagger when The Rolling Stones asked her 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. 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. Jagger considered proposing to Hunt but did not because he did not think he loved Hunt enough to spend the rest of his life with her, while Hunt, for her part, did not think they were sufficiently compatible to cohabit satisfactorily. In 1973, When Karis was two years old, Hunt asked the courts in London for an affiliation order against Jagger and eventually settled out of court. He agreed to set up a trust fund for Karis and pay $17 a week for her support until she reached 21,but he was allowed to deny his paternity on record. In 1978, Hunt filed a paternity suit in Los Angeles asking for $580 a week and for Jagger to publicly claim their daughter. At the time Hunt was unemployed and received welfare payments from Aid to Dependent Children.In 1979, Hunt won the paternity suit saying she wanted “only to be able to say to my daughter, when she’s 21, that I didn’t allow her father to neglect his responsibilities.” Through the years Jagger became close to Karis; he took her on holiday with his family when she was a teenager, attended her Yale University 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. 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 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 the 1970s, for a while, Hunt had a late night radio show, “Marsha and Friends”, on London’s Capital Radio.
In late 2004, Hunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and told to have surgery to remove her right breast and her lymph nodes. When she chose to have surgery, she decided to have it done in Ireland, because she felt that the Irish are more supportive and comfortable with illness than people in the U.S.; she envisaged that treatment in the U.S. would feel 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 happy that the cancer had been removed. Her view of the experience of mastectomy 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.
After her mastectomy, she contracted the superbug MRSA and had to be treated with Zyvox. 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.
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 would not 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 France, where she owns a home in the countryside about 60 miles from Paris.
Hunt is featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington D.C., which was opened by President Barack Obama.
Source: wikipedia.
... (more)
(less)
Tags: Actress (3), Singer (3), Model (2), Born 1946 (2), Gorgeous (2), Afro (1), Rich In Spirit (1), Marsha Hunt (1), Hammer Glamour (1), Still Living (1), Cancer Survivor (1), Leggy (1), Hammer Horror (1), 60s Star (1), Female (1), Hair (1), Beautiful (1), Novelist (1), Author (1), American (1)
My tags:
Add tags
Login
United States
Ireland
1 comment
