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Andre de Toth 1912 - 2002 Hollywood noir film director Andre de Toth dies LOS ANGELES (Reuters [paraphrased]) - Andre de Toth, the macho, eye-patch-wearing director of noir, Western and horror films, including "The House of Wax" -- the most critically successful of the 1950s 3-D movies -- has died of an aneurysm in his home in Burbank, associates said Wednesday. He was believed to be 90. "De Toth had one of the bleakest and hardest of all noir styles," wrote Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Wilmington recently, "and he's especially good with ambivalent heroes and psychopathic villains." It was a style widely admired and emulated by younger directors, from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino. His last directorial effort was "Terror Night" (1987), the gory tale of a former silent movie star who kills, one by one, a group of young adults who have intruded on his mansion. Born in Hungary around 1912, de Toth was married seven times. His wives included movie idol Veronica Lake, to whom he was married between 1944 and 1952. One of the curiosities of his career was his success with the 3-D format in "The House of Wax," the story of a psychopathic actor that marked the beginning of an illustrious career by horror movie star Vincent Price. Having lost an eye in an accident in his youth, de Toth had limited depth perception, and couldn't actually see 3-D film. De Toth is survived by his latest wife, Ann Green, and several children. Some of his best films as director include: Ramrod (1947, with his then-wife Veronica Lake), Pitfall (1948), Man in the Saddle (1951), Carson City (1952), Springfield Rifle (1952), The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), House of Wax (1953), Crime Wave (1954), The Indian Fighter (1955), Day of the Outlaw (1959). He also shared an Oscar nomination for co-writing the story of the notable "anti-Western" The Gunfighter (1950). He also reportedly did some uncredited second unit work on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Very recently he taught a film class at USC. He was given a Career Achievement Award by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 1995. For more, check out these books: De Toth on De Toth: Putting the Drama in Front of the Camera edited by Anthony Slide. Fragments: Portraits from the Inside with a forward by friend Martin Scorsese. * * *
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia: This colorful director is best remembered for making the popular 3-D movie House of Wax (1953), despite the fact that he is blind in one eye! Anyone familiar with this indomitable personality would agree that nothing as trivial as that would stop him. He began his career in Hungary in the early 1930s and rose to the position of director before fleeing on the eve of World War 2. In England, his countryman Alexander Korda gave him work as a second-unit director on his spectacular production of The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Then he moved to Hollywood and worked again for Korda shooting second-unit for Jungle Book (1942) before earning his director's stripes on a series of B movies like Passport to Suez (1943) and None Shall Escape (1944). He made a name for himself directing film noir tales and tough-minded Westerns, including Ramrod (1947, with his then-wife Veronica Lake), The Pitfall (1948), Slattery's Hurricane (1949, again with Lake), Man in the Saddle (1951), Springfield Rifle (1952), The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), The Bounty Hunter (1954), and The Indian Fighter (1955). He also shared an Oscar nomination for cowriting the story of the notable antiWestern The Gunfighter (1950). In later years, the resourceful De Toth worked mostly in Europe, producing such films as Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Play Dirty (1968), and El Condor (1970). He returned to Hollywood in the 1980s and has kept busy with a variety of projects, including a small acting role in Tobe Hooper's Spontaneous Combustion (1990), and teaching a film class at USC. * * *
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