André de Toth
| Andre DeToth | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Tóth Endre Antal Mihály May 15, 1913 Makó, Csanád County, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Republic of Hungary) |
| Died | October 27, 2002 (aged 89) Burbank, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Endre Antal Miksa De Toth (name taken on petition for naturalization; later changed to simply Andre de Toth for actual naturalization) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1939–1987 |
| Spouse(s) |
Veronica Lake (m. 1944–52) (2 children); divorced Marie Louise Stratton (m. 1953–82) (2 children); divorced Ann Green (m. 19??–2002; his death) |
| Children | Andre Anthony Michael DeToth (b. 1945) Diana DeToth (b. 1948) Michelle Stratton DeToth Nicolas Stratton DeToth |
Endre Antal Miksa DeToth, better known as Andre De Toth, André De Toth, Andre de Toth, André de Toth, et al (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 DeToth as his legal name.
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.
DeToth segued from there to the film industry and worked as a writer, assistant director, editor and sometime actor. In 1939 he directed five films just before World War II began in Europe. Several of these films received significant release in the Hungarian communities in the United States. He went to England, spent several years as an assistant to fellow Hungarian 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, he received an oral contract as a director at Columbia from which he ultimately extricated himself by litigation. DeToth preferred working as an independent and had no “A” budgets early in his career. Thus, he had to supplement his directing income with writing assignments, often uncredited. Introduced to Westerns by John Ford, he worked mostly in that genre throughout the 1950s, often bringing elements of noir style into those films.
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