The Enemy Below - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[tamara]

To add further confusion to the ship's identity, although called the "Haynes" in the movie, the ship's hull number is shown as DE-181, which was the USS Straub, a Cannon-class destroyer escort.

[lena]

According to the Australian DVD sleeve notes, "Producer-Director Dick Powell let the public decide the ending for The Enemy Below (1957). He filmed the movie with two endings, then let a preview audience vote for the ending they liked best. The ending he used won by unanimous vote." The ending which wasn't used had both submarine commanders, Captain Murrell (Robert Mitchum) and Von Stolberg (Curd Jürgens) die by drowning at the end of this picture when Murrell dives into the sea to rescue Von Stolberg. The used ending was the happy ending which had both of them rescued by a ship. Details of the two endings were reported in a July 1957 edition of 'The Hollywood Reporter' which stated that Powell filmed the two endings because he thought that the original ending (the unused one) was too bleak.

[javier]

The captain of the destroyer escort (DE) tells a sailor (radio operator) to maintain radio silence to keep the submarine from concluding it is being followed by a ship. But the DE would have already alerted the sub of its presence by the DE's radar transmitter signal.

[marc]

One of the two lead characters in this movie, the American captain John Murrell played by Robert Mitchum was an English captain in the D.A. Rayner novel 'The Enemy Below' that this film is based on.

[kristen]

According to Robert Osborne, Robert Mitchum fell down one of the ship's gangways while shooting, and was severely injured, requiring him to wear a back brace for the duration of filming. Also, some depth charges fired from the Navy destroyer used in the film were accidentally launched at the same time, causing damage to the ship's rudder and its hull.

[dustin]

Curd Jurgens and David Hedison have both appeared in James Bond Movies, Curd Jurgens in " The a Spy Who Loved Me". (1977) and David nHedison in " License to Kill(1989) and " Live and let die (1973)

[lena]

One of the technical consultants working on this movie was Albert Beck, a former German U-Boat submarine sailor, who advised on the submarine scenes.

[lonnie]

The U-Boat seen in this movie is far roomier and more spacious, cleaner and tidier than the real German U-boats of World War II (which were more realistically depicted in the later movie Das Boot (1981)). During the Second World War, these subs did not have passageways and private rooms and were dirty and cramped. (This can be seen first-hand in the U-505 on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.) Since the U-boat's "head" (toilet) could not be used at depth, the crew was forced to use buckets which, during depth charge attacks, frequently spilled. It was said that when a U-boat returned to base the smell inside the boat was enough to make dockworkers who went aboard vomit.

[kenneth]

As of July of 2015 with the death of Theodore Bikel, the only remaining star of the film still living is David Hedison (Lt. Ware)

[tamara]

In an ironic twist, the engineering officer, played by the ship's real-life commander Walter R. Smith, is seen reading a "Little Orphan Annie" comic while, in the same scene, an enlisted sailor is reading Edward Gibbon's classic "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

[jesus]

The entire movie takes place over a 24-hour period.