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Andre De Toth
A remembrance of my friend, director Andre de Toth (1913 - 2002)
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You skipped 'motherfucker,'" Andre de Toth alerted me. Unfamiliar with his Dell laptop, I found the cursor and scrolled back. I had skipped "motherfucker"… without realizing it, of course. De Toth smiled as I reread my lady friend's online letter aloud—with the ordained curse word intact. "'Motherfucker' is important," de Toth announced, "it adds punch. It's very important!"
Andre de Toth knew about punches. He knew how to take them. He learned in the political uprisings of his native Hungary, where as a teenager he was shot and woke up in a morgue. He learned in Poland in October, 1939, where he witnessed the Nazi war machine light the torch that started World War II. He learned from the bone bank in Switzerland that fused his spine in the first of three broken necks. He learned from watching his wife, Veronica Lake, the mother of his children, self-destruct in a haze of alcohol and drug addiction. He learned in the trenches of Golden Age Hollywood, battling moguls like Harry Cohn and Jack Warner on countless hardboiled genre pictures. Punches? With seven wives, 19 kids and 45 movies to his credit, he could teach a college course on the art of rolling with the damn things.
And now he's gone. Dead of an aneurysm. Andre de Toth was always straight to the point—even at the end.
De Toth's films were an expression of the man he was. In his youth he was dashing, but even his best movies were never pretty. He reveled at showing human nature at its worst, "to show us what not to do," he said. His obsession with the Judas kiss of betrayal transcended genre. This was evident from his startlingly original, late 1930s neo-realistic Hungarian melodramas (Two Girls on the Street, Semmelweis), through his bleakest American westerns (Ramrod, Day of the Outlaw) and his scathing explorations of the criminality of war (None Shall Escape, Play Dirty) to his atypical, female-driven film noirs (Pitfall, Crime Wave). Treachery, adultery, revenge and occasionally—if you were lucky—redemption were par for the course for Andre de Toth's heroes. "I shoot the clean, dirty truth," he told me over some good bordeaux at his home in Burbank, "the truth can be very dirty, you know."
The week of his passing, newspapers around the world eulogized him with phrases like, "a glorious rogue," "an enfante terrible into his eighties," "an in-your-face maverick" and, of course, they praised him as the one-eyed man who made the best 3-D picture ever, the classic House of Wax (1953). However, like his films, de Toth had no place for rose-tinted glasses. "How do you want to be remembered?" he was asked several years ago by MM. "I don't give a shit," he shot back, unblinking.
Why do people come into our lives? When you're lucky enough to befriend a master, you don't screw it up. And Andre de Toth was that: a true artist who maintained an uncompromising personal vision within the machinery of the old Hollywood system. But to me he was also a mentor, a father-figure, a collaborator.
I sought out Andre de Toth because I wanted to learn about his pictures. Without realizing it, I wanted his wisdom. Over coffee we sparred, tape recorder rolling. Five years later, with a documentary in the editing stages and a book mostly written, I haven't stopped learning.
De Toth himself never stopped, either—he never stopped asking questions, never stopped being fascinated by life. How many 89-year-olds do you know who are active on the Internet? He called me once while deleting junk e-mail, "Amazing, they send so many dirty ones… 'Hello Stud!'" De Toth laughed. "They say such funny things." As his body atrophied, his mind continued to rage.
Whatever the corny parable is about the old man teaching
life lessons to the young man whose enthusiasm feeds the old man's
spirit, I don't much care. I just miss talking to my friend about
girls, whiskey, dogs, movies, his day, my day. Life. I miss hearing
him bark at me. I miss hearing him tell me why "motherfucker" is
so important. MM
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by mike fitz on 4/06/08 at 2:50 am
I read de Toth’s book “Fragments” last year. The guy was definitely extraordinary. He seemed to have had an uncredited hand in writing many screenplays in his time, but never mentions any by title. I’ve since wondered just which movies he ghost-wrote. Did he ever mention any to you?
- Comment by Cristian Star on 5/14/08 at 5:09 am
I think that the Drug Rehab Clinic movie was one of his best movies as I understood from what I have read. We have to admit that this guy is a genius and congratulations are in order.
This story was published in the Winter 2003 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Hardboiled Life Lessons / A remembrance of my friend, director Andre de Toth (1913 - 2002)
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