From: Travoltron@fakeemail.org   
      
    From 1945-53, he appeared in 35 films, and his onscreen parents   
   included Dick Powell, Teresa Wright, Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, Leif   
   Erickson and Claudette Colbert.   
      
     Jimmy Hunt, the freckle-faced youngster who appeared in Pitfall,   
   Sorry, Wrong Number, Cheaper by the Dozen, Invaders From Mars and 31   
   other features before he retired from acting at age 14, has died. He was 85.   
      
   Hunt suffered a heart attack six weeks ago and died Friday in a hospital   
   in Simi Valley, his daughter-in-law Alisa Hunt told The Hollywood Reporter.   
      
   Hunt played William Gilbreth, one of the 12 offspring of an efficiency   
   expert (Clifton Webb) and a psychologist (Myrna Loy), in Cheaper by the   
   Dozen (1950), then returned to play another son in the family, Fred, in   
   the sequel, Belles on the Toes (1952).   
      
   As an orphan, his character fueled the plot in The Mating of Millie   
   (1948), a charming romantic comedy starring Evelyn Keyes and Glenn Ford,   
   who taught him how to shoot marbles on the set. And in The Lone Hand   
   (1953), Hunt portrayed the son of a widowed farmer (Joel McCrea) and   
   served as the film’s narrator in what he said was one of his favorite   
   acting experiences.   
      
   Hunt’s onscreen parents included Jane Wyatt and Dick Powell (in 1948’s   
   Pitfall), Claudette Colbert (1949’s Family Honeymoon), Ronald Reagan   
   (1950’s Louisa), Teresa Wright (1950’s The Capture) and Patricia Neal   
   (1951’s Week-End With Father).   
      
   He also played Margaret O’Brien’s brother in Her First Romance (1951).   
      
   His most memorable role, however, came as David MacLean in the cult   
   sci-fi classic Invaders From Mars (1953), directed by famed production   
   designer William Cameron Menzies.   
      
   In the movie — made in about 3 1/2 weeks for less than $300,000 — David   
   spies a flying saucer from his bedroom and notices his dad (Leif   
   Erickson) acting weird. Then he’s sucked underground, where he   
   encounters a Martian and his green humanoid accomplices aboard the   
   saucer. But was it all a dream? Gee whiz!   
      
   In Tobe Hooper’s 1986 remake of Invaders, Hunt came out of retirement to   
   play a police chief. As he approaches a hill where the flying saucer may   
   have landed, he says, “I haven’t been here for 40 years.”   
      
   It was the only movie of his career for which he received residuals.   
   “Every once and a while, the Screen Actors Guild sends me a check for   
   like nine dollars,” he said with a chuckle in 2022.   
      
     James Walter Hunt was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 4, 1939. An MGM   
   scout visited his second-grade class at his Culver City school, which   
   was located mere blocks from the studio, and that led to the 6-year-old   
   redhead playing a kid version of Van Johnson’s Navy pilot in High   
   Barbaree (1947).   
      
   Placed under contract, he would appear in five films released that year,   
   then another eight in 1948 as he attended MGM’s Little Red Schoolhouse,   
   where his classmates included Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor.   
      
   “We were strictly lower middle-class people,” Hunt said in 1986.   
   “Actually, that’s the way we stayed. As long as [his parents] were   
   satisfied that I was getting a good education, the acting was all right.”   
      
   In Cheaper by the Dozen, his character, William, weeps as he informs his   
   siblings that their dad has died.   
      
   During the making of the movie in Seal Beach, California, his real   
   father “was working for a company, and he went back to Kentucky to open   
   a plant for them back there, and he was gone for a couple of months,” he   
   recalled at the 2022 Cinecon Classic Film Festival. “In my mind, I saw   
   him coming home on a plane and the plane crashing. So I could get myself   
   worked up.”   
      
   His big-screen résumé also included Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), starring   
   Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster (Erickson played his dad in that,   
   too); Fuller Brush Man (1948), starring Red Skelton; Rusty’s Birthday   
   (1949), the last in the Columbia Pictures series about a boy and his   
   German shepherd; The Sainted Sisters (1948), starring Veronica Lake; Top   
   O’ the Morning (1949), starring Bing Crosby; Shadow on the Wall (1950),   
   starring Ann Sothern; and She Couldn’t Say No (1954), starring Robert   
   Mitchum and Jean Simmons.   
      
   “I took my little lunch pail and I went to work each day, and the   
   director told me what he wanted me to do,” he said in a 2017 interview.   
      
   While filming Douglas Sirk’s Week-End With Father, Hunt broke his arm   
   rehearsing a potato-sack race with Van Heflin but kept working, he said.   
   “No one made me finish the picture that way. I wanted to,” he recalled.   
   “I considered myself a professional. In other words, I never had any   
   really bad times as a boy actor.”   
      
   After Invaders was completed, Hunt — who said he was paid about $4,000   
   for his work on the movie — was called back to film some new scenes for   
   its U.K. release, as censors there did not approve of the original ending.   
      
   It turned out that Invaders was the last straw.   
      
   “The older I got, the more serious I became about getting a scene right   
   on the first take,” he said. “Adult actors all made jokes when they blew   
   their lines. Kids just feel dumb when it was their fault. So acting   
   became harder for me all the time.”   
      
   At the ripe old age of 14, Hunt “decided that I would rather play sports   
   in high school than make movies, so I retired,” he explained. He went to   
   college and served for three years in the U.S. Army, intercepting and   
   breaking code.   
      
   Later, he served as a sales manager for an industrial tool and supply   
   company in the San Fernando Valley that serviced aerospace firms.   
      
   He said he was still getting mail from Invaders fans some 70 years after   
   it first hit theaters.   
      
   Survivors include his wife, Roswitha, whom he met in Germany while in   
   the Army and married in January 1963; his sons, Randy and Ron; another   
   daughter-in-law, Christina; his sister, Bonnie; nine grandchildren; and   
   six great-grandchildren. His daughter, also named Roswitha, died more   
   than a decade ago.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)