Search results
Mar 21, 2003 · Alain Silver. March 2003. André de Toth (1913 - 2002) - A Tribute. Issue 25. This interview was originally published in Film Noir Reader 3 on February 12, 2001. It is published here with permission. André de Toth was born in Mako, Hungary on May 12, 1913. After earning a law degree in the early 1930s, de Toth, who had won acclaim for plays ...
- Alain Silver
Oct 24, 2023 · With André De Toth, the truth is particularly difficult to establish, since he clearly and consciously created a larger-than-life persona of a legendary director. At this point there are two books in English about De Toth. One is a series of interviews edited by Anthony Slide, De Toth on De Toth: Putting the Drama in Front of the Camera.
André De Toth. Writer: The Gunfighter. Although he obtained a law degree from the Royal Hungarian University, Andre De Toth decided to become an actor, and spent several years on the stage. He then entered the Hungarian film industry, obtaining work as a writer, editor, second unit director and actor before finally becoming a director. He directed a few films just before the outbreak of WW II ...
- May 15, 1913
- October 27, 2002
Sep 26, 2024 · House of Wax is a 1953 film about an associate who burns down a wax museum with the owner inside, but he survives only to become vengeful and murderous. Directed by André de Toth. Written by Crane Wilbur, based on the short story The Wax Works by Charles S. Belden. The Wax Figures Also Looked Like Other People - People Who Had Disappeared ...
- It Was only The Second 3D Movie to Be Released by A Major Studio.
- Ironically, The Director Lacked Depth Perception.
- Igor Was Played by A Young Charles Bronson.
- One Actor’S Appearance Went Uncredited Because He’D Been blacklisted.
- Phyllis Kirk Tried to Turn The Movie down.
- The Fire in The Opening Scene Spread Wildly Out of Control.
- It Comes with An Intermission.
- A Functioning Guillotine Was Used in The Climax.
- The Film Was Completed Way Ahead of Schedule.
- Bela Lugosi Attended The Premiere—Along with A Guy in A Gorilla Suit.
Three-dimensional cinema is older than you might think. The first feature film to use this technology was the silent drama Power of Love, which dates all the way back to 1922. Yet audiences didn’t truly embrace this innovation until some 30 years later with the release of Bwana Devil—a Technicolor thriller about man-eating lions. Produced independe...
As a child, André de Toth lost his left eye in an accident. Hence, the native Hungarian often wore an eyepatch. Rumor has it that WB president Jack Warner ordered de Toth not to wear the accessory on the set of House of Wax, lest anyone ridicule the studio for giving a 3D project to a one-eyed filmmaker. However, leading lady Phyllis Kirk cast some...
Like Dr. Frankenstein, Professor Jarrod has a henchman named Igor—albeit, one that suffers from mutism instead of back problems. The role was given to Charles Buchinsky, who’d later emerge as one of Hollywood’s favorite tough guys in movies like The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Worried that an eastern European last name might cost him a ...
Buchinsky/Bronson had it easy; changing his last name was nothing compared to what Nedrick Young went through as a result of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt. In early 1953, Young portrayed Leon (Jarrod’s other assistant) in House of Wax. Then, before the movie opened, he had to square off against a very different house: Accused of being a Ma...
Since she was under contract with Warner Bros., Kirk had no choice but to appear in this picture when the studio cast her as Sue Allen, one of the leads. That didn’t stop her from complaining about the gig. “I bitched and moaned and … [said] that I wasn’t interested in becoming the Fay Wray of my time,” Kirk confessed. Another bone of contention wa...
It must have been easy for Price to act alarmed in the sequence in which his museum burns down. Right before the shoot, de Toth’s crew set three “spot fires” in strategic locations. Then the cameras started rolling and everything went downhill. The team quickly lost control of their fires, which merged into a massive inferno that put a hole in the ...
Prior to the late 1970s, “epic” films would often treat their viewers to a built-in bathroom break. Midway through screenings of Gone With the Wind and other, extra-long classics, the action would pause, the theater lights would brighten, and the word “Intermission” would appear onscreen. Ordinarily, this practice was reserved for movies with bladd...
Toward the end of the film, Igor gets into a big fight with Sue’s boyfriend, Scott, played by Paul Picerni. From the get-go, there’s no doubt about which one has the upper hand, as Igor seizes poor Scott and shoves his head under a guillotine in the museum’s French Revolution display. Luckily, the police arrive in time to rescue our hero, pulling h...
House of Wax was given a $1.5 million budget and 60-day shooting schedule. De Toth finished it in only 28 days for a meager $650,000. Blown away by this efficiency, Jack Warner sent him a case of whiskeyas a “thank you.”
Although the star of Universal’s Dracula (1931) did not appear in House of Wax, he did help promote it. The film’s world premiere was held at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles on April 16, 1953. As a publicity stunt, Lugosi was invited to attend the big event. Clad in a vampire cape, he emerged from his limousine with a chain link leash, which w...
Endre Antal Miksa de Toth, known as Andre de Toth [b] (Hungarian: Tóth Endre; May 15, 1913 [1] [2] – October 27, 2002), was a Hungarian-American film director, born and raised in Makó, Austria-Hungary. [3] He directed the 3D film House of Wax (1953), despite being unable to see in 3D himself, having lost an eye at an early age. Upon ...
People also ask
Who is Andre De Toth?
Why did André de Toth wear an eyepatch?
How did De Toth die?
What did De Toth do before WW2?
Who is Endre Antal Miksa de Toth?
How many children did Michael De Toth have?
Oct 18, 2021 · André De Toth is one of the great, unsung directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. As Fred Camper noted in a 1997 essay bemoaning his lack of stature, De Toth receives only a cursory nod in Andrew Sarris’s canonical The American Cinema, with barely a paragraph of vague commentary, and he isn’t included at all in the 1984 International Directory of Films and Filmmakers. Curiously, he isn’t ...
