Curt Jurgens abandoned his burgeoning journalistic career when his first wife, actress Louise Basler, suggested that he give the stage a try. In German films from 1935, the year he played the young Emperor Franz Joseph in The Royal Waltz, Jurgens' rise to stardom was cut short nine years later, when he was sent to a concentration camp on the personal orders of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Surviving the ordeal, he returned to films in the postwar era, and in 1950 made his directorial bow with Pramien auf den Tod. He was brought to Hollywood in 1957 to play the philosophical U-boat commander in The Enemy Below, sharing equal billing and screen time with Robert Mitchum. His subsequent English-language films included Me and the Colonel (1958), in which he was sublimely teamed with Danny Kaye, and the 1959 remake of The Blue Angel, playing the tragic schoolmaster portrayed by Emil Jannings in the 1929 version. His last American film of note was I Aim at the Stars (1960) in which he played Werner Von Braun. Thereafter, Jurgens accepted an exhausting variety of roles in a vast array of international films, few of them worthy of his talents. In 1976 he wrote his memoirs, Sixty and Not Yet Wise (he was actually 64!). Curt Jurgens made his final appearance in the British espionage miniseries Smiley's People (1982).