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Elke Sommer, the stunning blonde bombshell of German descent who was a staple of 1960s Hollywood comedies and spy films including “The Prize” and “A Shot in the Dark,” has died. She was 85.
Sommer died at home in Bel Air, in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, his stepson Sebastian Walther told the German outlet Bild. The Los Angeles Police Department told The Associated Press that they responded to the death of an 85-year-old woman on the Sommer block Wednesday night.
With big almond eyes and golden locks, often dressed up in a beehive, Sommer worked with some of the biggest stars of the time, including Paul Newman in “The Prize”, Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movie “A Shot in the Dark”, James Garner and Dick Van Dyke in “The Art of Love”, Bob Hope in “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!” and Dean Martin and Sharon Tate in “The Wrecking Crew.”
Sommer Elke Schletz was born in Berlin in the middle of World War II, on November 5, 1940, although the family had to evacuate to the south in 1942. Her father, who died when she was 14, was a Protestant minister.
She planned to study languages, but during a trip to Italy with her mother, Renata, in 1958, she caught the eye of someone in the Italian film industry who invited her to appear in her first film: “The Friend of the Jaguar.” The actor and filmmaker Vittorio De Sica also noticed her, and soon she was working non-stop throughout Europe, Italy, Spain and England, with the new surname Sommer.
Her big break in Hollywood came from producer Pandro S. Berman, who saw her in a German drama shown at the Golden Globes, and offered her a role in “The Prize” where she played a chaperone and took an interest in the Nobel Prize winning character Newman. In the review trade publication Variety, they wrote that Sommer does not have a very fake role, but he intends to make it a secondary issue.” And it would give her the Golden Globe for the most promising newcomer.
In Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther series “A Shot in the Dark,” she played Maria Gambrelli, a maid framed for murder, who also happens to be the romantic interest of Clouseau’s Salesman Inspector. She also posed for Playboy Magazine around that time, in photos shot by her first husband Joe Hyams. They married in November 1964 and divorced in 1981.
In 1993 she married German hotelier Wolf Walther, who died in July aged 77.
Sommer didn’t take the gender symbol designation too seriously, saying it was largely meaningless. She told Film Talk in a 2014 interview that some of her favorite actors, such as Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, were also considered sex symbols. Besides, she said, she was always just playing the part.
“All my life, I was directed, I was produced, I spoke the lines that were written for the character,” she said in the interview. “I was always playing, and the only thing I could bring was my energy. So what is it, this sex appeal? Why was I voted on this list of sexiest women? It’s not because of my looks or anything; it’s because of the energy.”
