Arthur P. Hoyt

Arthur P. Hoyt (March 19, 1874 – January 4, 1953) was an American actor born in Georgetown, Colorado, whose career spanned both stage and screen. He accumulated more than 275 film appearances over 34 years, roughly a third of them in silent pictures, while also maintaining a presence on Broadway across multiple decades.

Hoyt made his Broadway debut in 1905 in The Prince Consort. He returned to the stage in 1908 in Ferenc Molnár's The Devil, and made what was then his final Broadway appearance in The Great Name in 1911. He later came back to Broadway, appearing in productions between 1925 and 1929 that included the play The Octoroon and the musical The Vagabond King.

His film work began with the silent comedy short The Scrub Lady in 1914, though his career in earnest started in 1916 with The Heart of a Show Girl. From 1916 through 1944, at least one film featuring Hoyt was released every year, and in many of those years the number reached a dozen or more. He took on substantial roles in notable silent features including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Souls for Sale (1923), and The Lost World (1925). In 1918 he also directed two silent features, Station Content, starring Gloria Swanson, and High Stakes, and served as casting director on Her American Husband. His 80th and final silent film was The Rush Hour (1928), starring Marie Prevost. His first sound film was My Man (1928), a musical starring Fanny Brice.

In the sound era Hoyt typically played supporting roles such as henpecked husbands or downtrodden office workers, and he frequently went without screen credit. He is perhaps most recognizable as the motor-court manager who clashes with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934). During the 1940s he became a regular presence in the work of writer-director Preston Sturges, appearing in every film Sturges wrote and directed from 1940 to 1947 as part of Sturges's informal company of character actors.

Hoyt, who was sometimes billed as "Mr. Arthur Hoyt," retired from acting at the age of 70. His final film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, was shot in late 1944 and early 1945 but not released until 1947. He died on January 4, 1953, at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, and is entombed at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.