|
John Hoyt (October 5, 1904 - September 15, 1991) was an American film, theatre, and television actor. Before becoming an actor with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, the Yale graduate worked as a history instructor, acting teacher and even as a nightclub comedian. Under his birth name (John Hoysradt), Hoyt began his performing career in a nightclub act doing impressions of famous entertainers. His impersonation of Noël Coward was so remarkable that Hoysradt was hired for the original cast of the Broadway comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner , in which he played Beverley Carlton: a role clearly based on Coward. Hoysradt began his movie career still using his birth name, but soon shortened it to Hoyt. He was known for playing heavies in films, but also had a part (a non pornographic one) in the softcore porn, Flesh Gordon . He also briefly appears naked (shown only from the waist up) in "X (The Man with X-Ray Eyes)". Hoyt had a number of memorable television roles including the grandfather on Gimme a Break! , a number of guest roles on Hogan's Heroes and the role of Dr. Philip Boyce on Star Trek's first pilot episode "The Cage". Another memorable role was as an evil Martian invader who tricks a busload of people and two policemen to take an unsafe bridge and fall to their deaths in episode 64 in the second season of the The Twilight Zone titled Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up . He appeared in one Shakespearean film, MGM's Julius Caesar , reprising the role of Decius Brutus (a.k.a Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus), which he had played in the famous 1937 Mercury Theatre production starring Orson Welles. He also appeared as KAOS agent Conrad Bunny in the Get Smart episode, "Our Man in Toyland." The last role of his acting career was an extended passionate monologue from the Gospel of Mark. Hoyt, who died of prostrate cancer in Santa Cruz, California, aged 86, was also in the film The Conqueror (1956), a film that is infamous for many of the film's cast dying of cancer.
|
