Ted Hecht

New York-born actor Ted Hecht (also sometimes billed as Theodore Hecht) got his start in theater, and eventually moved up to the Broadway stage, where he worked in such plays as Congai (1928), The Great Man (1931), and Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935). Hecht made the move into motion pictures at the start of the 1940s in small uncredited roles -- with his dark, intense features and rough voice, he was quickly typed into playing "foreign" roles, often with a sinister edge, in movies at every stratum of Hollywood. In So Proudly We Hail! (1943), he played Dr. Jose Bardia, while in the Katharine Hepburn/Walter Huston vehicle Dragon Seed (1944), he portrayed Major Yohagi; he was Prince Ozira in Tarzan and the Huntress (1947), and Lieutenant Sarac in Istanbul (1957). Hecht was also heavily employed on television, again in exotic and sometimes nefarious parts. In three episodes of The Adventures of Superman he portrayed (East) Indians and Arabs, while he played Chinese characters in episodes of Terry and the Pirates.

Hecht normally did one-shot appearances that didn't allow him much in the opportunities to develop his characters or his portrayals. The big exception in his career came during his work on the series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, where he appeared in seven episodes, portraying the notorious interplanetary outlaw and pirate Pinto Vortando. His work was, by turns, broad, sinister, and charming, a mix of stereotyped Mexican bandito with a little bit of Long John Silver thrown in, but it did evolve across the series. He starts out as a one-dimensional bad guy but convincingly softens from his contact with the youngest of the heroes, the boy space traveler Bobby (Robert Lyden), and, by his seventh episode, becomes one of the series' most likable villains, a rogue with a twinkle of goodness in his eye that he can't stamp out but must live with. Even 40 years later, watching the series, one couldn't help but be impressed with what he did with the one- (okay, maybe one-and-a-half-) dimensional role. Hecht retired at the end of the 1950s, and passed away in 1969.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide