John Hoyt Movies

John Hoyt, best known to TV sitcom fans as the capricious Grandpa on Gimme a Break, appears in this episode as stern temperance lecturer Jeremiah Priddy. Kate is quick to realize that Priddy is so dedicated to his cause that he is sorely neglecting his young son Clint (played by Buddy Foster, the brother of Jodie Foster). When Clint runs away to the Shady Rest, Kate takes it upon herself to bring father and son back together by turning the tables on Priddy and lecturing HIM! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frontier scout Jess Remsberg (James Garner) is crossing the desert when he spots a dead army scout and group of Apaches pursuing someone -- it turns out to be a white woman, Ellen Grange (Bibi Andersson); he gets her away from them and returns her to her home and her husband Willard (Dennis Weaver), who seems much more upset that the horse she was riding when she left is dead than he is glad that she is back. Ellen was kidnapped by the Apaches two years before and rescued a year after that, and had fled a town where her husband and everyone else had treated her as an outcast since her return. Apart from preventing her from being raped by some drunken townsmen, however, Remsberg barely has time to worry over what goes on between them, as he has a mission of his own -- tracking down the men who murdered his wife, a Comanche woman. A key clue is in the hands of the town marshal in Fort Conchos and to get there he has to scout for a cavalry unit bringing horses, ammunition, and fresh recruits to the fort, with Grange and his wife -- and the infant son she had by the Indian chieftain who took her as his squaw -- going along, with ex-buffalo soldier-turned-horse wrangler Toler (Sidney Poitier). Their party ends up under siege by Chata (John Hoyt), the Apache Indian chief and grandfather to Ellen Grange's baby, who has jumped the reservation; he wants his grandson back, and the ammunition the troop was carrying, and also intends on killing Ellen for inadvertently causing the death of his son. They all end up trapped in a box canyon while Remsberg tries to survive to get help from Fort Conchos. If this all sounds complicated, it's not, especially as told by director Nelson, in a straightforward, unpretentious, brisk, and decidedly violent fashion that anticipates his own Soldier Blue, made four years later. Every plot element links up neatly in this script, which quite effectively recalls (and weaves together) elements of the book and the movie Hondo as well as any number of revenge westerns of the 1960's. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Homer Bedloe (Charles Lane) is back with yet another scheme to put the Hooterville Cannonball out of business. In fact, he's gotten pretty expansive since his last visit: Now he intends to put all of Hooterville out of business as well! It seems that Homer has convinced the stage legislators to build a dam that would ultimately flood Hooterville and force everyone out of the community--including his longtime nemesis Kate Bradley (Bea Benaderet). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast November 26, 1966, Fame is the Name of the Game was the first official entry in NBC-TV "Project 120" series of made-for-TV movies (after two false starts in 1964). Tony Franciosa plays a magazine writer investigating the suicide of a beautiful girl. He uses the girl's address book as a key to piecing together the mystery of her self-destruction--and in so doing discovers that she'd actually been murdered. Advertised as an "original" for television, Fame is the Name of the Game was actually a remake of the 1949 Alan Ladd melodrama Chicago Deadline, right down to the identity of the mystery killer. Jill St. John and Jack Klugman co-star, with Jack Weston, Robert Duvall, Nanette Fabray and Jay C. Flippen popping up in supporting roles. This film served as the pilot for the 1968-71 TV series Name of the Game, with cast members Tony Franciosa and Susan St. James retained for the series proper. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A scary old haunted house provides the setting of this spooky thriller that centers on a psycho-magician who cut off his wife's head during a performance. Twenty years pass and he finally dies. His daughter is to inherit his estate, but before she can claim it, she must spend seven nights in his mansion. A reporter decides to stay with her. It's a good thing too because her father isn't dead at all. He is hiding in the house waiting for a chance to lop off her pretty little head. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set during the Vietnam war before U.S. involvement, this political drama tells the gripping story of an American operative who is sent to Saigon to protect the U.S. ambassador from an unknown assassin's bullet. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Aspiring to a military career, Jethro announces his intention to enroll at West Point. Not wishing to risk the loss of the Clampett millions, Drysdale persuades Jethro to sign up at a military academy closer to home -- with the usual chaotic results. Ubiquitous character actor John Hoyt is cast as the forever flustered Colonel Hollis, while John Reilly appears as cadet Harry Hogan. "Military School" made its first network appearance on December 15, 1965. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a nuclear holocaust, a group of scientists travel to the future and find a world in tatters, where the human survivors must constantly defend themselves against mutated beasts. Upon seeing the future of the earth, the men would like to return to 1964, but find it may not be possible. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

The infamous story of 19th century grave robbers Burke and Hare is given a new slant in this episode, told from the point-of-view of dimwitted Scottish laborer John McGregor (Andrew Duggan). In order to provide gin money for his sodden wife, Aggie (Elsa Lanchester), McGregor takes a job hauling what he thinks are boxes of tanbark to the Edinburgh Medical Academy. Eventually, McGregor figures out that those boxes actually contain the remains of those unfortunate souls who have been murdered by grave robbers Burke (Arthur Malet) and Hare (Michael Pate), who then sell the corpses for dissection purposes to a Dr. Knox (John Hoyt). Rather than summon the authorities, McGregor decides to use the grave robbers in a hastily improvised scheme to rid himself of his alcoholic spouse. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On the night of his wedding in 1929, Harvey Kry (David Frankham) is surprised by an anonymous gift, a box with a single hole containing a lens, through which a strange light emanates. He looks into it and sees a monstrous creature inside, that holds him in the gaze of its single eye -- and then transports the screaming man inside. Thirty-five years later, the Kry house is in decay, occupied solely by Harvey's bride Mary (Miriam Hopkins), now aging and grotesque in her 1920's sequined dress and thick make-up, still awaiting the consumation of her marriage to Harvey. She finds herself entertaining her first guests in years, Gard (Buck Taylor) and Vivia (Melinda Plowman), a young, under-age couple who are eloping, and offers them her bridal chamber. But the box remains in there, amid the unused, still-wrapped gifts; and inside, the creature watches and waits in its own long vigil, to draw others inside. Vivia and, later, her pursuing father (John Hoyt), are both drawn into the box and the void inside, and confront this monster, an extraterrestrial from another space-time continuum, lost in our four-dimensional space and unable to fulfill its mission -- the destruction of the Earth and then our universe. To accomplish this, it needs a human being to help it find its way. Harvey Kry wouldn't do it and, so, has spent 35 years trapped inside the timeless void, looking exactly as he did in 1929, while his increasingly desperate (and insane) bride has waited, and aged, and conspired with the creature. And Vivia is just frightened enough; and her father is just self-centered enough, that one of them might do what it asks. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Although he no longer works for the insurance company that had hired him to track down the stolen Jokarta Diamond, shady private detective Jack Mallory (Michael Pate) has never given up the chase. Worming his way into the confidence of Katherine Stewart (Phyllis Hill), Mallory puts a tail on Katherine's husband Philip (Phillip Pine), recently released from prison after serving a manslaughter charge--and the primary suspect in the theft of the elusive diamond. After a confrontation in which he demands that Phillip reveal the diamond's whereabouts, Mallory is murdered--and Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is hired to prevent "number one suspect" Phillip Stewart from going back to prison for keeps. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The President of the United States requires an emergency operation, which must be conducted in secret, after he is injured in a fall. The Seaview is chosen as the safest place for the surgery, but an enemy power has gotten an assassin aboard, as part of the surgical team performing the operation. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

This is the second of four consecutive episodes in which Perry Mason appears only briefly, while a "guest" lawyer handles the case at hand (Raymond Burr was at the time recovering from minor surgery). Michael Rennie stars as erudite law professor Edward Lindley, one of Perry's best friends and severest critics. Though he has never handled a murder case--and indeed, regards most defense attorneys with the utmost disdain--Lindley agrees to help one of his students, Janice Norland (Patricia Manning), who claims to have killed blackmailing dance instructor Raul Perez (Carlos Romero). But when Lindley accompanies Janice to the scene of the crime, the body has disappeared! Ultimately, however, Janice is charged with Perez' murder, with circumstantial evidence provided by a candid camera which the dead man used for his extortion racket. Making things even dicier is the possibility that Janice's own mother Maureen (played by Patrice Wymore, former wife of movie superstar Errol Flynn), is the guilty party!. Excluded from the original Perry Mason syndicated rerun package in 1966, this episode remained unseen until it was telecast on cable TV in the mid-1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide