Arthur Hoyt

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Arthur Hoyt (19 March 1874–4 January ) was an American film character actor who appeared in more than 275 films in his 34 year film career, about a third of them silent films.

Career

Born in Georgetown, Colorado in 1874, Hoyt made his Broadway debut in 1905 in a play called The Prince Consort, which was not a success. He also appeared in Ferenc Molnár's The Devil in 1908, and made his final stand on the Great White Way in The Great Name in 1911..

Hoyt made one silent movie in , a comedy short called The Scrub Lady, but his film acting career did not begin in earnest until when he appeared in another short, The Heart of a Show Girl. From that time until , not a year passed without a film being released that Hoyt had acted in – and frequently a number of them, up to a dozen or so. Hoyt had large roles in such silent films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Souls for Sale and The Lost World (). He also directed two silent features, Station Content starring Gloria Swanson and High Stakes,, and was the casting director for a another, Her American Husband,, all in .

Hoyt's final silent film, his 80th, was The Rush Hour which starred Marie Provost. Unlike her, Hoyt survived the transition to talkies, although he generally played much smaller roles in sound films – the 5'6" Hoyt was often cast as a beleagured husband, an exploited nine-to-fiver or a nervous politician – and he frequently did not receive screen credit for his performances. His first sound film was 's My Man, a musical starring Fanny Brice, and the pace of his work did not slack off in the sound era. He may be best remembered as the motor-court manager who hassles Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night ().

In the 1940s, when he was nearing the end of his career, Hoyt was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in all the films written and directed by Sturges from to .

At the age of 70, Hoyt, who was sometimes billed as "Mr. Arthur Hoyt", retired from acting. The last film he appeared in, Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock was filmed in late and early , although it wasn't released until . Hoyt died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California on 4 January , and is buried at the Chapel Of The Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California.

Selected filmography

Silent:

Sound:

Notes

External links

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Last updated on Friday July 18, 2008 at 23:45:02 PDT (GMT -0700)
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