Submitted by
Nick Dando
Original at
The Guardian
André de Toth
The Guardian
October 31, 2002
Hard-working film director whose life was as eventful as his movies
by: Ronald Bergan
Thursday October 31, 2002
If we are to believe even a fraction of what has been written by and about
the film director André de Toth, who has died aged 89, then his life was
even more exciting and varied than the plots of his movies. Having met him a
few times in his 80s, I can only vouch for his extraordinary energy, passion
and earthy humour, and the conviction with which he delivered his anecdotes.
These included stories of when he was taken for dead during a student riot
in Vienna and woke up in the morgue; and how, when his girlfriend fell
pregnant and her father whisked her away for an enforced abortion, de Toth
saved her when he discovered her father visited male prostitutes and
threatened blackmail. There was also the story of how during the war he fell
in love with an anti-Nazi jewellery courier who had a passport made under
the name of Mrs de Toth before embarking on a dangerous mission, and how the
passport was returned to him covered in blood. Another told of how, while
scouting for locations in 1973 in Egypt, he was kidnapped and interrogated
by a group of young men who, because of his eye patch, thought he was
Israeli minister of defence Moshe Dayan, until he revealed, literally, that
he wasn't Jewish.
Curiously, the one-eyed de Toth was married for eight years to Veronica
Lake, whose "peekaboo" hairstyle gave the impression that she had only one
eye, and he directed House Of Wax (1953), the first horror film in 3D, the
effects of which he couldn't have seen.
The last time I saw him was at the cinema centenary celebrations at Lyons in
1995. With his black eye patch, his shaven head and his neck in a brace (he
broke it four times, first in a skiing accident), he made a striking,
somewhat scary, impression. However, after proclaiming, "Lyons is to
film-makers what Bethlehem is to Christians," he presented the other famous
guests with a statuette he had sculpted himself. He then announced that his
favourite director was Satyajit Ray - a surprise because most of the films
de Toth directed were incisive, small-scale Westerns, including six with
Randolph Scott.
De Toth, who described himself as a "Hungarian-born, one-eyed American
cowboy from Texas," was born in Mako. After studying law in Budapest, he
tried his hand at playwriting (becoming friendly with playwright Ferenc
Molnar) and sculpture. He entered Hungarian films in 1931 as screenwriter,
editor, second-unit director and sometime actor, billed variously as Endré
Toth, Andreas Toth and, finally, André de Toth.
He directed five Hungarian films just before the outbreak of the war, and
one of them, Wedding In Toprin (1939), won the Most Artistic Film Award from
the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. Another was The Life Of Dr Semmelweiss
(1940), based on the story of a doctor who found a cure for childbirth
fever.
De Toth then went to England, where he worked for Alexander Korda as
second-unit director on The Thief Of Bagdad (1940), and on to Hollywood for
Jungle Book (1942). The following year he made his American debut as
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
policiers 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
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.
After this he had more time for his hobbies - flying, driving racing cars,
playing polo, skiing, painting, sculpting and his large family. He was
married seven times and had 19 children; his seventh wife, Ann Green,
survives him.
In 1994, he published his lively memoirs, Fragments: Portraits From The
Inside, and was honoured with a retrospective at the Edinburgh Film
Festival, although he insisted: "I don't want to be judged by yesterday's
junk." Of most of the younger directors, he commented: "I wouldn't let them
direct the goddamn traffic." André de Toth certainly lived up to his motto: "Don't be careful. Have fun. I did."
André de Toth (Sasvrai Farkasfawi Tothfalusi Toth Endre Antai Mihaly),
film director, born May 15 1913; died October 27 2002
Back to index
