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Louis Jean Heydt

Louis Jean Heydt
Louis Jean Heydt
Born: Apr 17, 1905 in Montclair, New Jersey
Died: Jan 29, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation: Actor
Active: '40s-'50s
Major Genres: Drama, Crime
Career Highlights: The Great Moment, Stranger at My Door, The Old West
First Major Screen Credit: Pacific Blackout (1941)
10 Videos for Louis Jean Heydt
The Big Sleep (1946) High Sierra (1941) Gone With the Wind (1939)
They Were Expendable (1945) How Green Was My Valley (1941) Gone With the Wind (1939)
The Great Moment (1944) The Great McGinty (1940) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
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Biography:

It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' {~Strictly Dishonorable}, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942).

Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye).

Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949).

Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM Gang shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.