Thoeren went into exile following the Nazi rise to power in 1933, first in France and later in the United States. Thoeren had already ceased acting and begun writing screenplays for films and became a top writer in the United States working with leading directors including Joseph Losey and William Dieterle. Thoeren returned to Germany after the Second World War and continued his career as a screenwriter. His story idea for the 1935 French film Fanfare of Love and its 1951 German remake Fanfares of Love was used as the basis for Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot released in 1959, two years after his death.
He married the German actress Erica Beer in 1957, but died in the same year in a car crash.

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