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Wed Sep 11, 8:30 PM ET
from Yahoo Daily News
Oscar-Winning Actress Kim Hunter Dies
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actress Kim Hunter, best known for her Oscar-winning
role as Stella Kowalski opposite Marlon Brando in the 1951 screen classic "A
Streetcar Named Desire," died on Wednesday at age 79, family members said.
Hunter, whose role in a 1943 Ginger Rogers film about women who lived
communally during World War II led to her being blacklisted as a suspected
communist during the 1950s, died of natural causes at her Greenwich Village
apartment, upstairs from the Cherry Lane Theater, her son, Sean Emmett said.
Hunter amassed an impressive array of stage, film and television credits
during a career spanning seven decades, appearing as recently as last year in an
off-Broadway revival of "The Madwoman of Chaillot" for the Neighborhood
Playhouse."
Her varied career included Broadway credits in the 1950s productions of
"Darkness at Noon" and "The Children's House"; a screen role as the ape-woman
Zira in the original 1968 "Planet of the Apes" and two sequels; and an
Emmy-nominated turn on the ABC daytime drama "The Edge of Night."
Charlton Heston, who co-starred with her in "Planet of the Apes," issued a
statement saluting Hunter as "a fine actress and a wonderful person."
But she is perhaps best remembered as Brando's long-suffering and loyal wife
Stella, the younger sister of Vivien Leigh's Blanche DuBois, in Tennessee
Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," a role she originated on Broadway. Her
big-screen performance earned Hunter an Academy Award for best supporting
actress.
The following year, she co-starred as the ex-wife of a newspaper editor
played by Humphrey Bogart in "Deadline U.S.A." and appeared opposite Jose Ferer
in the comedy "Anything Can Happen."
Born Janet Cole in Detroit and raised in Miami, Florida, Hunter made her
stage debut in a local production where she was spotted by talent scouts and put
under contract by film producer David O. Selznick.
She was loaned out for her first film, the 1943 thriller "The Seventh
Victim," and the same year was cast with Ginger Rogers in Edward Dmytryk's
"Tender Comrade," about a group of women who shared a house while their husbands
were off serving in World War II.
Partly as a result of her appearance in that film, Hunter's name surfaced in
Red Channels, a pamphlet listing those suspected of having communist sympathies,
and she ended up on the Hollywood blacklist.
She continued to work on stage and resumed film acting as the blacklisting
faded. She also chalked up numerous television credits as far back as 1948 as a
recurring player on ABC's "Actors Studios" and with guest roles ranging from an
Emmy-nominated turn on "Baretta" to an appearance on the NBC sitcom "Mad About
You."
She returned to Broadway in 1996 for a revival of "An Ideal Husband" at the
Ethel Barrymore Theater, where she had co-starred in "A Streetcar Named Desire"
years before. Hunter returned to feature films with a small part in Clint
Eastwood's 1997 drama "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."
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