André de Toth

André de Toth
Born	Sâsvári Farkasfalvi Tóthfalusi Tóth Endre Antal Mihály May 15, circa 1912 Makó, Csongrád, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)
Died	October 27, 2002 Burbank, California, United States
Occupation	Hungarian-American film director
Years active	1939–1987
Spouse(s)	Veronica Lake (1944 - 1952; divorced) Marie Louise Stratton (1953 - 1982; divorced) Ann Green (19?? - 2002; his death)

André de Toth (born May 15, circa 1912^[1][2] - died October 27, 2002) was an Academy Award-nominated Hungarian- American filmmaker, born and raised in Makó, Csongrád, Austria-Hungary.^[3] He directed the 3-D film House of Wax, despite being unable to see in 3-D himself, having lost an eye at an early age. He is known for his gritty B movies in the western and crime genres.

Career

Born ca. 1912 as Sâsvári Farkasfalvi Tóthfalusi Tóth Endre Antal Mihály, he earned a dgeree in law from the Royal Hungarian University in the early 1930s. He garnered acclaim for plays written as a college student, acquiring the mentorship of Ferenc Molnár and becoming part of the theater scene in Budapest. From that involvement he segued to the film industry and worked as a writer, assistant director, editor and sometime actor. In 1939 he directed five films just before war began in Europe. Several of these pictures received significant release in the Hungarian communities in the United States. De Toth went to England, spent several years as an assistant to fellow Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda, and eventually moved to the Los Angeles in 1942.^{[citation needed]}

Based on his Hungarian films, the production work for Korda and writing he had done on American projects during earlier stints in Los Angeles, de Toth was given an oral contract as a director at Columbia from which he ultimately extricated himself by litigation.^{[citation needed]}

Because he preferred working as an independent, de Toth had no “A” budgets early in his career and had to supplement his directing income with writing assignments, often uncredited. Introduced to Westerns by John Ford, de Toth worked mostly in that genre throughout the 1950s, often bringing elements of noir style into those films.^[4]

While he is often remembered as the director of the earliest and most successful 3-D film, House of Wax, (all the more remarkable since, like Ford, Fritz Lang, and Raoul Walsh, de Toth had only one good eye), he was also responsible for two of the noir cycle's most unusual examples: Pittfall and Crime Wave.

Death

In 1996, he published his memoir, Fragments –Portraits from the Inside (London: Faber and Faber, 1994). He died from an aneurysm in 2002 and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.^[5]

Personal life

De Toth was married 7 times, including to:

• Veronica Lake, to whom he was married from 1944 until 1952. They had a son, Andre Anthony Michael De Toth (October 25, 1945-February 24, 1991) and a daughter, Diana De Toth (born October 16, 1948). They divorced in 1952.

• Marie Louise Stratton, to whom he was married from 1953 until 1982, when they divorced. This marriage also produced two children, Michelle and Nicolas.

• He was married to Ann Green at the time of his death; they had no children together.

Selected Filmography

Further reading

• Anthony Slide (editor), De Toth on De Toth: Putting the Drama in front of the Camera (Faber, 1996)

References

External links

• André de Toth at the Internet Movie Database.
• André de Toth at Allmovie.
• Find-A-Grave profile for André De Toth.