1885-1961
Silent writer and director Harry O. Hoyt was born on this day in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated in 1910 with a degree from Yale University. Two years later he went into the film industry. The first of his scenarios to be made into a film was in 1913 An Unjust Suspicion produced by The Biograph Company. He made his directorial debut in 1915 with For High Stakes, a film that he also penned, for the Kalem Company. Though he had steady writing work throughout the silent era, mostly concentrated in the 1910's; and he directed some 28 titles, he is mostly remembered for only one of these: The Lost World (1925). It is one of the most famous surviving science fiction silents, featuring some very impressive stop-motion animation for it's time. The film stars Wallace Beery and Bessie Love and is based on the writing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The first film that had sound to feature one of his screenplays was a Phil Rosen directed drama The Rampant Age (1930). The first sound film that he directed came in 1933 with Jungle Bride, a film penned by Leah Baird, starring Anita Page. He continued to write through out the rest of his career, but there would be a long hiatus between his directorial jobs after the above mentioned film. He did not go back to directing until 1947 with the technicolor short Harness Racing. From this point on, he directed only 4 more titles, all of them shorts. One of them was Cinderella Horse (1948), which would turn out to be the last of his writing jobs. The last film that he directed was The Will To Win in 1951. He then retired from industry; living out the rest of days in his adopted state of California. He died on 29 July in Woodland Hills, just shy of his 76th birthday. There is no information as to his interment or cremation. Below is the full tint restored print of The Lost World by the George Eastman House.
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