Elke Sommer

Elke Sommer - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Elke Sommer

Elke Sommer (née Schletz, born 5 November 1940) is a German actress. She appeared in numerous films throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including roles in The Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark (1964), the Bob Hope comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1974), and the British Carry On series in Carry On Behind (1975).

This profile of Elke Sommer covers Early Life and Family Background, Discovery, The 1960s, The 1970s and Later work.

Early Life and Family Background of Elke Sommer

Sommer was born in Berlin, Nazi Germany, to Baron Peter von Schletz, a Lutheran minister, and his wife, Renata (née - Topp). During the Second World War (in 1942), the family was evacuated to Niederndorf, a village near Erlangen, a small university town in Franconia. From 1950, she attended a gymnasium (university-preparatory secondary school). Her father died when she was 14. Sommer was good with languages, but math and science posed challenges for her, so her mother let her drop out of gymnasium in 1957 one year after graduating from middle school. In the spring of 1957, Sommer moved to London for one year to work as an au pair for the family of Vicki Michelle, who later became an actress, and to attend an English language institute three times a week. This was Sommer's first time away from home and family, and she was homesick.

Discovery of Elke Sommer

Sommer was spotted by film director Vittorio De Sica while on holiday in Italy, and she began appearing in films there in 1958. Also that year, she changed her surname from Schletz to Sommer. She soon became a sex symbol and moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s. Sommer became one of the more popular pin-up girls of the time, posing for pictorials in the September 1964 and December 1967 issues of Playboy magazine.

The 1960s

Sommer became one of the top film actresses of the 1960s. She made 99 film and television appearances from 1959 to 2005, including The Prize (1963) with Paul Newman, A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers, The Art of Love (1965) with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar (1966) with Stephen Boyd, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) with Bob Hope, the Bulldog Drummond extravaganza Deadlier Than the Male (1966), The Wrecking Crew (1968) with Dean Martin and Sharon Tate, and The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968); in each of these films she was the leading lady.

In 1964, she won a Golden Globe award as Most Promising Newcomer Actress for The Prize, a film in which she co-starred with Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson.

A frequent guest on television, Sommer sang and participated in comedy sketches on episodes of The Dean Martin Show and on Bob Hope specials, made 10 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and was a panelist on the Hollywood Squares game show many times between 1971 and 1980, when Peter Marshall was its host.

The 1970s

Sommer's films during the 1970s included the thriller Zeppelin, in which she co-starred with Michael York, and a 1974 remake of Agatha Christie's murder mystery Ten Little Indians. In 1972, she starred in two Italian horror films directed by Mario Bava: Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil. In 1975, Sommer went back to Italy to act in additional scenes for Lisa and the Devil, which its producer inserted into the film to convert it to House of Exorcism against the wishes of the director.

In 1975, Peter Rogers cast her in the British comedy Carry On Behind as the Russian Professor Vrooshka. She became the Carry On films' joint highest-paid performer, at £30,000; this was an honour that she shared with Phil Silvers (who starred in Follow That Camel).

Most of her movie work during the decade came in European films. After the 1979 comedy The Prisoner of Zenda, which reunited her with Sellers, the actress did virtually no more acting in Hollywood films, concentrating more on her artwork.

Later work

In the 1980s, Sommer hosted a syndicated programme titled The Exciting World of Speed and Beauty. She also appeared twice on Hollywood Squares in episodes that aired in May 1987 and in May 1989.

After the 1990s, Sommer concentrated more on painting than on acting. As an actress, she had worked in six countries learning the languages (she speaks seven languages) and storing images which she has expressed on canvas. Her artwork shows a strong influence from Marc Chagall.

Sommer was embroiled in a long-running feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor that began in 1984 when both appeared on Circus of the Stars. The feud escalated into a multimillion-dollar libel suit by 1993, resulting in Sommer being awarded $3.3-million in damages from Gabor and her husband, Frederick von Anhalt, for defaming her in interviews published in a pair of German publications in 1990.

In 2001, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

Sommer provided the voice of Yzma in the German version of The Emperor's New Groove.

Personal Life

In 1964, Sommer married Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams, who was 17 years her senior, in Las Vegas. Hyams filed for divorce from Sommer in 1981. Hyams claimed in his divorce filing that the time he was married to Sommer "were the best 17 years of my life," but that she now needed "her independence" to be "happy."

While being cast in the play Tamara, which she started appearing in 1989, she met Wolf Walther, eight years her junior and the managing director of a luxury hotel, Essex House, in New York City. They were married on 29 August 1993 in her German hometown of Franconia. Walther moved to Los Angeles with her following their honeymoon. In a 2014 interview, Sommer described how she and Walther met:

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elke_Sommer), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.