Toht
A sadistic Gestapo agent whose burned palm guided the Nazis to the wrong dig site.
Arnold Ernst Toht, played by Ronald Lacey, is an SS-Sturmbannführer and the secondary antagonist of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Raiders describes him as a sadistic Gestapo agent. He and his thugs burn down Marion Ravenwood's bar in Nepal while trying to take a medallion from her.
Quick Facts
- Actor
- Ronald Lacey
Lore & Background
When Toht tries to recover the medallion from the flames, he only burns its image into his hand. The Nazis use the scars on his palm to make an incomplete replica of the medallion, but they dig in the wrong place, because the other side of the medallion held further instructions that were not transferred to his hand. Toht is killed with Belloq and the assembled Nazis when the Ark is opened on an island in the Aegean Sea.
Reader's Guide
Toht was called Belzig in the August 1979 draft of the script. Ronald Lacey was cast because he reminded Spielberg of Peter Lorre, and Spielberg abandoned an idea to give Toht a mechanical arm that could be replaced with a machine gun or flamethrower. In the novelization and the original script, Toht dies earlier, when Gobler's car flies off a cliff during the truck chase. Lacey later cameos as Heinrich Himmler in The Last Crusade.
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