Born in 1913 as Sasvári farkasfalvi tóthfalusi Tóth Endre Antal Mihály, de Toth earned a degree in law from the Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter Science's University in Budapest in the early 1930s.

He garnered acclaim for plays written as a college student, acquiring the mentorship of Ferenc Molnár and becoming part of the theater scene in Budapest.

Toth went to England, where he spent several years as an assistant to fellow Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda, and eventually moved to Los Angeles in 1942.

[3] Based on his Hungarian films, the production work for Korda and writing he had done on American projects during earlier stints in Los Angeles, de Toth received an oral contract as a director at Columbia Pictures from which he ultimately extricated himself by litigation.

Scouting for locations in Egypt shortly after the Yom Kippur war of 1973, De Toth was kidnapped, pistol-whipped and interrogated by a group of vengeful young men who had mistaken him for Moyshe Dayan.