Andre De Toth, a Hungarian-born movie and television director whose loss of an eye as a youth robbed him of depth perception yet did not prevent him from making the most highly regarded of all three-dimensional films, died Oct. 27 at his home in Burbank. The cause was an aneurysm, friends said.
In recent publications and interviews, Mr. De Toth gave the year of his birth as 1913, likely making him 89. But The Los Angeles Times said it found some listings as early as 1910.
Mr. De Toth was best known for “House of Wax” (1953), one of the few jewels to emerge from the 1950s 3-D movie craze, which required audiences to wear colored glasses to see the three-dimensional effects. But the film was in many ways atypical of his work as a director.
His most enduring legacy was a series of superb B movies, mostly westerns and crime dramas that he made in the late 1940s and 1950s. They were gritty, psychologically acute and unflinchingly violent.
Many critics consider his finest film to be “Pitfall,” a 1948 film noir starring Dick Powell as an insurance investigator who falls into the clutches of a femme fatale, played by Lizabeth Scott. Another favorite is “Crime Wave,” a 1954 film noir starring Sterling Hayden, which was shot largely at night in seedy locations around Los Angeles.
Most of Mr. De Toth’s genre films were westerns, and he worked with many of the stars of the period, including Joel McCrea in “Ramrod” (1947), Gary Cooper in “Springfield Rifle” (1952) and Kirk Douglas in “The Indian Fighter” (1955).
McCrea’s co-star in “Ramrod” was Veronica Lake, who was married to Mr. De Toth from 1944 until their divorce in 1952. In his 1994 autobiography, “Fragments: Portraits From the Inside,” Mr. De Toth wrote about his marriage to Lake, who died in 1973, their bankruptcy court battles and his subsequent marriages to six other women.
He was born Sasvrai Farkasfalvi Tothfalusi Toth Endre Anral Mihaly in Mako, Hungary, and grew up in wealth and comfort, the son of a civil engineer and former hussar, who was crushed when his son did not also join his elite regiment. Mr. De Toth studied law in Budapest but was drawn to acting, photography, sculpture and painting.
He became a director in 1938 and made five films before he was assigned to make Nazi propaganda films and chronicled the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Later that year, Mr. De Toth left for England, where he quickly found work as a writer and second-unit director with producer Alexander Korda, who took him to Hollywood in 1942.
His first film in the U.S. was “Passport to Suez” (1943), about war intrigue in North Africa.
“House of Wax,” in which Vincent Price played the crazed owner of a wax museum who dipped his murder victims, was by far his most prominent film. Although popular with audiences and celebrated for its groundbreaking technical effects, it was not a critical favorite.
Mr. De Toth earned his only Academy Award nomination for writing, with William Bowers, the story upon which the 1950 Gregory Peck film “The Gunfighter” was based.
In later years, Mr. De Toth also worked in television, directing episodes of series including “Maverick” and “77 Sunset Strip.” His last major Hollywood movie was “Play Dirty” (1968), a dark-edged war film starring Michael Caine.
Among his survivors is his wife, Ann Green. The Associated Press reported that Mr. De Toth had 19 children, including two with Lake, and some stepchildren, but was unable to say how many survived him.
