An engineer with no acting experience, he was stationed in Italy when director
Luigi Zampa chose him for
To Live in Peace (1947), for which he needed an African-American actor who could also play the trumpet. Encouraged by the success of the movie, Kitzmiller kept pursuing an acting career with several noted European directors. He won the Best Actor prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival for
Valley of Peace (1956), but his career rapidly began to decline shortly after. Depressed, he sunk into alcoholism, which led to his premature death at age 51.