André de Toth

Endre Antal Miksa De Toth, better known as André de Toth (May 15, 1913– October 27, 2002) was a Hungarian-American film director, born and raised in Makó, Csanád, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire. 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. Upon naturalization as a United States citizen in 1945, he took Endre Antal Miksa De Toth as his legal name.

Career

Born in 1913 as Tóth Endre Antal Mihály, with the nobility titles of Sasvári Farkasfalvi Tóthfalusi, he earned a degree in law from the Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter Science's University in Budapest 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 films received significant release in the Hungarian communities in the United States. De Toth went to England, spent several years as an assistant to fellow émigré Alexander Korda, and eventually moved to Los Angeles in 1942.

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. As 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. In 1951 he received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing (with co-writer William Bowers) for the story filmed as The Gunfighter. While largely remembered as the director of the earliest and most successful 3-D film, House of Wax, he also was responsible for two of the noir cycle's most unusual examples: Pitfall and Crime Wave.

Personal life

During his seven mariages De Toth became father and stepfather of 19 children. One of his sons is editor Nicolas de Toth

His wives included:

• 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 Olympia, Washington) 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.

Memoir

In 1996, he published his memoir, Fragments – Portraits from the Inside (London: Faber and Faber, 1994).

Death

On October 27, 2002, de Toth died from an aneurysm, aged 89. He was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills.