(A film director's memoir which opens amidst the enchanted...)
A film director's memoir which opens amidst the enchanted cafe society of pre-war Budapest and then propels the reader through De Toth's eventful life. Moving from Vienna, Paris and London to Hollywood, he introduces many of the legendary figures of cinema's golden age.
(While delivering a shipment of horses desperately needed ...)
While delivering a shipment of horses desperately needed to mount a big offensive in the United States' Civil War, Union Major Lex Kearny is overwhelmed by a band of Confederate raiders.
André de Toth was a Hungarian-United States actor, director, editor, screenwriter, author, whose film works mostly consisted of Hollywood "B" movies in the crime and western genres. He was highly respected by his fellow directors and became famous for his 3-D horror film House of Wax.
Background
André de Toth was born as Sasvrai Farkasfawi Tothfalusi Toth Endre Antal Mihaly on May 15, 1913, in Mako, Csongrad, Hungary. He was a son of a civil engineer and former Hussar and grew up in wealth and comfort. His father was crushed when André de Toth did not also join his elite regiment. As a teenager, he wrote stage plays, and although none were produced, one of them, ''Discreet Bond,'' introduced him to Ferenc Molnar, Hungary's most famous playwright of the time, who in turn introduced the young man to Hungary's leading artistic and film circles.
Education
André de Toth earned a degree in law with honors from the Eötvös Loránd University in the early 1930s. He garnered acclaim for plays written as a college student, acquiring the mentorship of Ferenc Molnar and becoming part of the theater scene in Budapest.
André de Toth entered Hungarian films in 1931 as screenwriter, editor, second-unit director and actor, billed variously as Endré Toth, Andreas Toth, and, finally, André de Toth. He directed the first of his five Hungarian films in 1938. With the onset of World War II, he was compelled by the Germans to make propaganda movies, and he consequently recorded a number of battles during the war before fleeing to the United Kingdom in 1939. There De Toth worked for Alexander Korda as second-unit director on The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), and on to Hollywood for Jungle Book (1942).
Three years later he moved to the United States, where he became associated with director David O. Selznick and Hunt Stromberg. He made his American debut as a director with a quickie from the Lone Wolf detective series. This was followed by a number of unconvincing, but economically directed, melodramas - Dark Waters, a psychological thriller with Merle Oberon; None Shall Escape, a vigorous anti-Nazi tract (both 1944); and The Other Love (1947), a soppy soap opera starring Barbara Stanwyck as a concert pianist dying of TB. They were all indistinguishable from much other studio fare of the decade.
Luckily John Ford, who was set to make Ramrod (1947), was busy shooting My Darling Clementine, thus giving de Toth the chance to demonstrate that he had an eye for powerful action stuff. Ramrod, his first Western, was as straight and solid as its hero, Joel McCrea, who helps tough ranch-owner Veronica Lake avenge herself on a baddie. Most of the Westerns which followed, no matter the budget, were tense and moody allegories of good and evil, especially those with Randolph Scott. Springfield Rifle (1952), starring the ageing Gary Cooper, and Day Of The Outlaw (1959), a bleak and powerful Western set against a wintry Wyoming landscape, were also notable.
He turned his hand to films noirs such as Pitfall (1948), which exploited Dick Powell's glum, craggy 40s persona in a tale of a happily married man caught in the tentacles of a fashion model (Lizabeth Scott); and Crime Wave (1954), a realistic story of an ex-con's problems that influenced the policies of French director Jean Pierre Melville.
Monkey On My Back (1957) was a stark drug-addiction movie, based on the story of boxing champ Barney Ross's addiction to morphine after being wounded in the war. This was shown in lurid detail, although a brief scene showing Ross injecting himself was cut to obtain a Code Seal. The subject was close to de Toth's heart because of Veronica Lake's drug problems.
De Toth sustained the action well throughout The Indian Fighter (1955), featuring a dynamic buckskinned Kirk Douglas, and filmed in CinemaScope and Technicolor on location in the magnificent mountain country of Oregon. But with the changes in the cinema in the 60s, during which Westerns became rarer, de Toth was offered fewer pictures. However, he was credited as a supervising director on a number of Italian epics (the law required an Italian director on the films). He was uncredited on David Lean's Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), though he directed the train crash for the second unit.
Play Dirty (1968), with Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport as antagonistic officers in command of a unit made up entirely of ex-cons, had a screenplay, co-written by Melvyn Bragg, that stated rather crudely that only the insane or criminals make good soldiers. It was the last film de Toth directed. He wrote about his filmmaking experiences in his 1994 autobiography Fragments: Portraits from the Inside.
André de Toth shared a 1951 Oscar nomination with William Bowers for Best Original Motion Picture Story for The Gunfighter (1950). In 1995, De Toth was awarded the Career Achievement Prize by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. André de Toth published his memoir, Fragments: Portraits from the Inside, in 1994.
Although later directors who were trained at film schools revered André de Toth, he had little use for that kind of education. He much preferred his own adventurous method, which included racing fast cars and flying planes. He bragged about his adventures in war zones, including once being mistaken in the Middle East for the Israeli war hero Moshe Dayan, who also wore an eye patch.
Quotations:
''Film schools teach you absolutely nothing. The psychology of being a director, it's not mechanics - either you've got it or you ain't. The No. 1 requirement is understanding. A film director works with the most sensitive instrument, human beings.''
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Despite André de Toth lost an eye (so lacked depth perception), he shoot a 3-D movie.
Interests
driving racing cars, painting, sculpting
Sport & Clubs
polo, skiing
Connections
André De Toth was married seven times. He became a father and a stepfather of 19 children. His first wife was Veronica Lake, second wife - Marie Louise Stratton, seventh wife - Ann Green.
child:
Michelle De Toth
child:
Nicolas De Toth
Nicolas de Toth is a second-generation filmmaker. After studying acting for six years, he worked in production, occupying various positions, from gaffer and grip to production manager. His editing career started as an assistant editor, working with Academy Award-winning editor Neil Travis for eight years. He has now been editing on his own for 10 years, with film credits including Stoker, This Means War, and Wolverine: X-Men Origins.
André De Toth was married to Veronica Lake from 1944 until 1952. They had a son Andre Anthony Michael De Toth III (born on October 25, 1945) and a daughter Diana De Toth (born on October 16, 1948).
ex-wife:
Marie Louise Stratton
André De Toth was married to Marie Louise Stratton from 1953 until 1982. They had two children: Michelle and Nicolas.
Wife:
Ann Green
André De Toth married Ann Green in 1984; they had no children together.
