Curd Jürgens: defying Nazi power and escaping POW camps to become an acting giant
There are plenty of actors with mesmerising rags-to-riches tales that brought them from the lowest point in their lives to the summit of cinema, but Curd Jürgens comfortably boasts one of the most fascinating.
The actor may have started his stage and screen career in the mid-1930s, but it was World War II that became the making of the man in more ways than one. By the time he gained international prominence, he was already a well-travelled veteran, but he continued going from strength to strength once his profile began rising overseas.
To offer an indication of just how remarkable Jürgens’ life story became, he’s the only actor to have escaped from a Nazi-controlled prisoner of war camp, embarked on an affair with Dorothy Dandridge, and played the villain in a James Bond movie. An unusual trifecta, but reflective of a professional life that became accustomed to unexpected developments.
Jürgens continued working in his native Germany despite openly voicing his opposition to the Nazi regime, which was destined to catch up to him eventually. In 1944, he became embroiled in a shouting match with somebody who turned out to be the brother of a high-ranking official in the Austrian SS, although he was unaware of those affiliations at the time.
After rubbing the brother of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, lieutenant colonel Otto Skozerny, and a staffer of former Hitler Youth chief Baldur von Schirach the wrong way, Jürgens making his political views so outspoken in the presence of Nazi officials saw him shipped off to a labour camp in Hungary for those deemed “politically unreliable”.
However, he couldn’t be contained and escaped after several weeks before going into hiding. Unsurprisingly, there were no feature film appearances for Jürgens between 1944 and 1948, when he resurfaced in the Austrian comedy The Singing House, the country where he became an official citizen after the end of the conflict.
His first major role outside of Germany and Austria ended up doubling as his breakthrough moment, with Jürgens taking second billing behind Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman, the French romantic drama that launched her to sex symbol status and marked the directorial debut of Barbarella‘s Roger Vadim. Spreading his wings, Jürgens found more success in Italy with The House of Intrigue before returning to France to play the title character in Michel Strogoff, the biggest local hit of 1956.
He shared the screen with Richard Burton in Bitter Victory before making his fully-fledged Hollywood bow in The Enemy Below, where he played a German U-boat commander opposite Robert Mitchum’s American counterpart. He worked with Dandrige on Tamango, where their tryst began, continuing to notch ‘Golden Age’ icons as colleagues as the years progressed.
Ingrid Bergman, Debbie Reynolds, Orson Welles, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, Oliver Reed, and Diana Rigg were just some of the names Jürgens shared an ensemble with before the end of the 1960s in smash hits, historical epics, and awards season contenders alike.
Because he was a European actor, he was regularly cast as nefarious foreigners and Nazis, but he didn’t seem to mind when he was getting high-profile parts in films like The Longest Day, Battle of Britain, and The Assassination Bureau, with the most famous antagonist of his career coming when he played the megalomaniacal Karl Stromberg opposite Roger Moore’s 007 in The Spy Who Loved Me.
That would turn out to be the last major role of his career, with Jürgens passing away five years after his Bond outing in 1982 at the age of 66. Married five times, escaping from the Nazis, reinventing himself as an international superstar, and taking his talents to Hollywood made it one hell of a journey, not to mention one of the unlikeliest success stories to emerge in post-war cinema.
