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Elke Sommer

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Elke Sommer
Sommer in 1965.
Born
Baroness Elke von Schletz

(1940-11-05) 5 November 1940 (age 83)
Berlin, Germany
OccupationActress
Years active1959–present
Spouse(s)Joe Hyams (1964–1981) (divorced)
Wolf Walther (1993–present)
Parent(s)Baron Peter von Schletz
Renata Topp[1]

Elke Sommer (born 5 November 1940), born Baroness Elke von Schletz, is a German actress, entertainer and artist.

Career

Sommer was born in Berlin to a Lutheran minister and his wife. After World War II, the family was evacuated to Erlangen, a small university town in Southern Germany, where, despite their lack of money, she attended the prestigious Gymnasium (high school) in Erlangen. However her father's death when she was 14 precluded further formal education, and she moved to England to be an au pair, to perfect her English and earn a living.

She was spotted by film director Vittorio De Sica whilst on holiday in Italy, and started appearing in films there in the late 1950s. She quickly became a noted sex symbol and moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s. She also became one of the most popular pin-up girls of the time, and posed for several pictorials in Playboy Magazine (September 1964 and December 1967).

She became one of the top movie actresses of the 1960s and made 99 movie and television appearances between 1959 and 2005, including A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, 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), and The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin; Sommer was the leading lady in each of these films.

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

In 1972, she starred in two Italian horror movies directed by Mario Bava, which have both become cult classics Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil. The latter film was never theatrically distributed in its original form; it was later re-edited (with 1975 footage inserted) to make a different movie called House of Exorcism. Sommer went back to Italy to star in the additional scenes that were inserted into the movie by its producer, against the wishes of the director.[citation needed]

In 1975, Peter Rogers cast her in Carry On Behind as the Russian Professor Vrooshka.[2] She became the Carry On's highest paid performer, at £30,000 (an honour shared with Phil Silvers for Follow That Camel).

Sommer also performed successfully as a singer, making several albums.

Later career

Since the 1990s, she has concentrated more on painting than on acting. As an actress, she worked in half a dozen countries learning the languages (she speaks seven languages) and storing up images which she later expressed on canvas. Her artwork shows a strong influence from Marc Chagall. Sommer had a long-running feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor that began in 1984 when both appeared on Circus of the Stars and escalated into a multi-million dollar libel suit by 1993.[3]

In 2001, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.[4]

She now lives in Los Angeles, California and has no children.

Personal life

She married Joe Hyams (1964–1981), who was 17 years older, in Las Vegas in front of a Justice of the Peace. Elke Sommer suffered her first miscarriage while working on the set of The Money Trap, in which she played alongside Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth.

The second miscarriage followed exactly one year later during the filming of Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number, where she starred with Bob Hope under the direction of George Marshall.

In 1973, Elke Sommer and Joe Hyams tried again to start a family. While working on the set of Die Reise nach Wien she suffered her third miscarriage, and her marriage was on the rocks.

Her mother Renata Schletz accompanied her to movie sets as well as on theater tours even after Elke Sommer’s marriage to Joe Hyams had failed and a new man came into her life: Tom Bohla. Tom Bohla moved in with Elke Sommer, who had separated from her husband, was still sharing the house with him and had no intention to file for divorce. Until she met Wolf Walther, the general manager of New York City’s luxury hotel Essex House, eight years younger than Elke. They were married on August 29, 1993 in Franconia.[5]

Selected filmography

References

  1. ^ Biography
  2. ^ Stevens, Christopher (2010). Born Brilliant: The Life Of Kenneth Williams. John Murray. p. 289. ISBN 1-84854-195-3. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  3. ^ Bob Pool, $3.3-Million Libel Award in Sommer-Gabor Feud, Los Angeles Times, 9 December 1993, Accessed 15 January 2011.
  4. ^ Palm Springs Walk of Stars by date dedicated
  5. ^ http://www.elkesommeronline.com/en/biography11.htm

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