Born Sasvrai Farkasfawi Tothfalusi Toth Endre Antai Mihaly on May 15, 1913, he went on to have seven wives, 19 children and break his back not one, not two, but three times in skiing accidents. It's hard to imagine that Andre de Toth also had the time or energy to make 45 movies spread across the world: in his homeland of Hungary, and Austria, Poland, England, the United States and even Lone Pine, but he did.

Born to a Hussar soldier, de Toth was a disappointment to his family, becoming a writer rather than a professional soldier. Playwright Molnar became his mentor and helped him on his way. "Paying his dues" as a camera operator for cinematographer Eiden in Hungary, he went on to work for the Korda brothers among others. After several trips to the US, de Toth realized he had to establish himself as a professional filmmaker in Hungary first. In nine months he made five movies, some of which met with critical notice back in the States, playing in the cities where large minorities of Hungarian refugees had settled."

It is difficult to know exactly what work he did on many films, for most of his contributions were uncredited. He finally got a directorial nod from Harry Cohn of Columbia after Cohn had seen some of his Hungarian pictures. He did a quickie for Cohn called PASSPORT TO SUEZ, which led to NONE SHALL ESCAPE and critical recognition. However, most credit his first western, RAMROD, as establishing him once and for all.

Later, when de Toth was scouting locations for his production SPRINGFIELD RIFLE, he presented Jack Warner with 12 thick albums, unlabeled as to their location. When Warner and the picture's producer easily chose one above the others, de Toth identified it as "above Lone Pine". He reports Warner's angry response, "No way will I agree to this picture to be shot in Lone Pine, this is a big "A" picture, a Gary Cooper picture, Warner's biggest western of the year. No," foamed the producer, "this is not a Hopalong Cassidy. Find another location." The film was made above Lone Pine.

"Of course it was Lone Pine", de Toth explained to Anthony Slide in one of a series of interviews published as DeToth on De Toth. "I killed the 'killer preconceptions' by photographing the magnificent countryside from within the story. The farmlands and the 'horse country' around lone Pine and the Sierras at nine, ten thousand feet above the Alabama Flats, Pop Sherman's country. He and other filmmakers never saw that Lone Pine; it was too far off for comfort, too much trouble to clamber up there, that high…. As I've said before, never shoot a picture in front of scenery, a dead postcard. The scene should grow from within.".

In a recent evaluation of de Toth's work, writer Fred Camper states, "De Toth's great theme is betrayal---not single betrayals but networks of betrayal that implicate most of his characters." I would suspect much of that theme was in the experience the young man had living in Europe in the political chaos before WWII. The rumor persists that de Toth actually filmed the Nazi invasion of Poland, but the film that would prove it is missing.

In his autobiography Fragments: Portraits from the Inside, de Toth calls Sherman "the uncrowned king of the Alabama flats, above Lone Pine and below Mount Whitney in the High Sierras….a lovely man, who was born old. I liked him. I didn't think he disliked me, he just didn't know into which of the small square boxes in his brain he could put me."
De Toth explains how his view of the west differed from Pop Sherman's. In Sherman's views, according to de Toth, "Heroes couldn't waver, they never made love, were not allowed to take off their spurs, day or night, even when stalking their foes. It was not stupid to keep them on, jingling on the rocks…it was sporting."

The location did give de Toth trouble. One morning they awoke to a storm on Whitney with fog and snow and not much better in the valley. While the Warner's man said no way, de Toth decided to film. And film they did but "UP" (Under Protest) by the man who de Toth elegantly referred to as "Twopants," because he wore two pair in the bitterly cold altitude. The cameraman, who de Toth called Marblehead, agreed with Twopants. The weather held enough to get the work done, and Gary Cooper said if Warner tried to fire de Toth, Cooper would stand by him. On Monday, a special messenger from Warner arrived at eleven thousand feet with a thick envelope. De Toth figured he had been fired, and didn't bother to open it. After work he opened it to find a bundle of cash, $10,300, plus a note. "I won this on chemin de fer during the weekend. I gambled for smaller stakes than you did. You gambled with your tomorrow. You won. That's your bonus. Stay stubborn. Stuff looks good. -J.L."

Andre De Toth died on October 27, 2002. The Lone Pine Film festival had invited him once to attend a Festival, but the week before, he called saying he just couldn't make it, with no further explanation. An attendee this year, who knew de Toth well, urged us to ask him again in 2003, and it looked like a definite possibility.

Now it is too late. However, his Lone Pine westerns, and many more films, survive and are obtainable on video. They are worth searching out.