Harry O. Hoyt on AllMovie

"Frankly a hack." This was one film historian's assessment of the directorial career of Harry O. Hoyt -- and frankly, it was an accurate one. While a Yale undergrad, Hoyt began submitting screenplays to Hollywood studios, and continued doing so after becoming a lawyer. A director from 1916, Hoyt was fortunate enough to be associated with surefire projects featuring top-rank casts; he seldom brought any more to these films than what was already there, but he was always employed. Hoyt is best remembered as director of the pioneering stop-motion-animation feature The Lost World (1925), though credit for this fantasy film's success is due more to special-effects wizard Willis O'Brien than to Hoyt. Harry Hoyt's shortcomings as a director were emphasized in the sound era, when he was reduced to such shabby efforts as Jungle Bride (1933).