TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Western, Drama, Action, Traditional Western, Crime, War
Key Collaborators: David Buttolph (Composer), Randolph Scott (Leading Actor), Stanley Fleischer (Production Designer), Samuel Bischoff (Producer), Bert Glennon (Cinematographer), Ernest Borgnine (Leading Character Actor), Charles Bronson (Leading Character Actor), Elisha Cook Jr. (Character Actor), Veronica Lake (Leading Actress), Phyllis Kirk (Leading Actress), Joan Weldon (Leading Actress), Winston Miller (Screenwriter)

“De Toth's 20 years in Hollywood represent the major part of his output - mostly vigorous westerns and hard-hitting crime and suspense thrillers.. Although one tends not to get involved with the characters in a De Toth film - exceptions are Dark Waters, Last of the Comanches and Monkey on My Back - the movies often contain long action sequences which, stylishly realized and skilfully edited, convey genuine high excitement to an audience.” - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"André de Toth seems destined to be remembered as the one-eyed director who made the best 3-D movie ever (House of Wax, 1953). That would be a grave injustice to a tough, vigorous professional who brought an unsentimental intelligence to everything he made… Like fellow European émigrés Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak, de Toth brought a grim, harsh, even brutal sensibility to the studio material he was given. He gravitated naturally to film noir (Pitfall, 1948, and Crime Wave, 1954, are probably his strongest), and that noir perspective also comes through in his numerous vividly staged Westerns." - Tom Charity (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

“As Endre Tóth, he directed several Hungarian films just before the outbreak of WW II, then went to England, where he worked for Alexander Korda as second-unit director on The Thief of Bagdad (1940)… His films were typically gutsy Westerns and action dramas, noted for their curious detachment and casual attitude toward violence and treachery… After the late 50s he worked mostly in Europe, but he kept returning to the US to explore potential projects.” - The Film Encyclopedia, 2012

"Pitfall (48), Springfield Rifle (52), Play Dirty (68), and others show De Toth's penchant for narratives which contain subtle, sometimes elusive portraits of evil. There is always a deep psychological undertone in the director's best films, all of which are action tales." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"André de Toth's most interesting films reveal an understanding of the instability and outright treachery of human relationships. Ramrod, Pitfall, Springfield Rifle, The Indian Fighter, and Day of the Outlaw are unusually unpleasant explorations of failed love and trust. The assorted villainies seem more like the natural order of things than like mere contrivances of melodrama." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"De Toth studied law at the Royal University, Budapest and, after a brief foray into the theatre, began to work in films in the Thirties. He directed his first features in Hungary just before the war, then moved to England and on to Hollywood as an assistant to Alexander Korda. He emerged as an interesting director in his own right during the middle and late Forties, specializing in action pictures and Westerns including a pair starring his wife, Veronica Lake." - The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, 1983