John Hoyt

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Promotional photo for John Hoyt
Promotional photo for John Hoyt

John Hoyt (October 5, 1904September 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.

Hoyt was known for playing heavies in films, but also had a part (a non pornographic one) in the softcore porn, Flesh Gordon.

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 (1953 film), 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."

Hoyt, who died of lung 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.

[edit] Trivia

  • Appeared together with DeForest Kelley (who played Dr. Boyce's successor Dr. Leonard McCoy on Star Trek) in the 1962 Bonanza episode entitled "The Decision." Kelley played a doctor who was sentenced to hang for the murder of a judge's wife. The judge was played by Hoyt.

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