Edward Hoyt

Biography

May 1859 found Edward Hoyt drawing his first breath in Auburn, New York, a lakeside town that could never have guessed one of its sons would trade its quiet streets for the flicker of silent-film studios. By 1916 he had stepped before the cameras, lending his weathered presence to *Merely Mary Ann* and *Little Miss Happiness*, then rekindled Puritan torment as a stern Puritan in 1917’s *The Scarlet Letter*. Off-screen he shared life—and a name—with his wife, Fanny Hoyt. His own final curtain fell in Chicago on 23 February 1920, but those fleeting celluloid shadows still keep his face alive.