Streetcar star Kim Hunter dies

Kim Hunter, the actress who won a supporting Oscar in 1951 as the long-suffering Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire and appeared in three Planet Of The Apes films, has died. She was 79.

Hunter suffered an apparent heart attack in her Greenwich Village, New York, apartment, said her daughter, Kathryn Emmett.

She enjoyed a long and busy career in theatre and television, less so in films, partly because she was blacklisted during the communist-hunting 1950s and did not fit the sexpot pattern for female Hollywood stars.

A Streetcar Named Desire was the highlight of her career. The play was cast with Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski, Karl Malden as Mitch, and Jessica Tandy as the tragic Blanche DuBois.

Leigh, Malden and Hunter won Academy Awards; despite his unforgettable performance, Brando did not.

Oscar’s legendary golden touch did not seem to apply to Hunter. Her subsequent films were few, and they lacked the lustre of Streetcar.

Her return to film was Lilith (1964), which starred Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg and Peter Fonda. Four years later came Planet Of The Apes.

Hunter was cast as Dr Zira, a chimpanzee psychiatrist in the science fiction classic about a group of astronauts from a ruined earth who discover a future world ruled by apes, with humans as slaves. The actress spent hours as the makeup and monkey suit were applied and later removed.

Hunter married William Baldwin in 1944; they had a daughter, Kathryn, and divorced in 1946. In 1951, she married actor and producer Robert Emett. Their son was named Sean Robert.