Elke Sommer

Elke Schletz was born on 5 November 1940 in Berlin (her official biography gives the Spandau district), the only child of Peter Schletz, a Lutheran pastor said to descend from the old noble von Schletz family, and his wife Renate (Renata) Topp. In 1942 the family was evacuated to Niederndorf, a village near Erlangen in Franconia, where they lived in a one-room basement flat and her mother took in laundry to make ends meet. The rural landscape of storks, red roofs and meadows later reappeared in her paintings. She loved animals from childhood. Her father died when she was 14.

From 1950 she attended the humanist Gymnasium in Erlangen (Gymnasium Fridericianum). She was strong in languages but struggled with mathematics and science, and her mother allowed her to leave in 1957, a year after completing her middle-school certificate. She then spent a year in London as an au pair and studied English at a language institute three times a week, aiming to become an interpreter. She went on to speak six or seven languages, and as a child she had studied painting under Peter Bina.

Crowned Miss Viareggio while on holiday in Italy in 1958, she was brought to Rome by Vittorio De Sica and began making Italian films that year under the name Sommer. In 1959 Artur Brauner signed her to a three-year contract, and she played opposite Horst Buchholz in Das Totenschiff (The Death Ship). After Das Madchen und der Staatsanwalt (1962) she moved to Hollywood.

Her American breakthrough came with The Prize (1963) opposite Paul Newman, which won her the 1964 Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer, Actress, followed by A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers. She was the leading lady in The Art of Love (1965), The Money Trap (1965), The Oscar (1966), Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), The Venetian Affair (1966), Deadlier Than the Male (1967), The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968) and The Wrecking Crew (1968). She was a regular on The Dean Martin Show and Bob Hope specials, appeared ten times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was a frequent Hollywood Squares panelist between 1971 and 1980.

In the 1970s she made Zeppelin (1971), Percy (1971), Baron Blood (1972), Lisa and the Devil (1973), And Then There Were None (1974), Carry On Behind (1975), The Swiss Conspiracy (1976) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1979). She began acting on stage in 1970, touring US theatres and German venues such as the St. Pauli Theater in Hamburg, and appeared in Tamara in New York from 1989. From the 1980s she worked mainly in German television, appeared in four episodes of The Love Boat, hosted the syndicated programme The Exciting World of Speed and Beauty, and voiced Yzma in the German dub of The Emperor's New Groove (2000). Her final feature was Dani Levy's Life Is Too Long (2010), and in 2017 she voiced Nette in the animated short A Thousand Kisses.

She also recorded several albums as a singer, including a folk LP sung in eight languages, Du, Du liegst mir im Herzen, though her singing career had modest success.

Sommer said she would rather be known as a painter who acts than as an actress who paints. Her first exhibition opened at Galerie Schumacher in Munich in 1968, and she went on to hold dozens of solo shows in Europe and the United States, initially signing as "E. Schwartz". Her colourful, often rural work drew heavily on Marc Chagall and sometimes included a crucifix in memory of her pastor father. In 1985 she hosted a 13-episode television series, Painting with Elke Sommer.

In 1964 she married Hollywood columnist and author Joe Hyams, 17 years her senior, in Las Vegas, and settled in Beverly Hills. Hyams filed for divorce in 1981, saying their marriage had been "the best 17 years of my life". While starring in Tamara in New York in 1989 she met Wolf Walther, then managing director of the Essex House hotel, and they married on 29 August 1993 in Marloffstein, Franconia. She had no children of her own; Walther had a son and a daughter from his first marriage. The couple lived between Marloffstein and Los Angeles until 2025, then settled in the United States for his cancer treatment. Walther died on 22 July 2026, aged 77.

Raised in a pastor's household, Sommer was often described in the German press as the "Erlangen pastor's daughter", and she titled her 1989 autobiography "Unter uns Pfarrerstochtern" (Among Us Pastors' Daughters). In 1975, the UN International Women's Year, she defended nudity against prudery in a televised debate with conductor Hortense von Gelmini on Der heisse Draht, hosted by Joachim Fuchsberger. A lifelong animal lover, she said her childhood room was shared with dogs, a cat, a hedgehog, a guinea pig and trained mice.

Sommer is remembered as the German "Fraulein wonder" of the 1960s who made it to the top in Hollywood, starring opposite Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dean Martin, Bob Hope and James Garner. A Shot in the Dark remains a Pink Panther classic, and her Mario Bava films have a cult following among horror fans. Her roughly 100 screen credits across six countries, her painting career and her decades on American television made her one of the most recognisable German entertainers of the 20th century.

Golden Globe, Most Promising Newcomer, Actress (1964, for The Prize). Bambi awards (1967 and 1968). Chicago best stage actress of the year honours (1972 and 1973). Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars (2001). Bavarian Order of Merit (2019). Honorary performer award at the Eat My Shorts short film festival in Hagen (2017).

Autobiography: "Unter uns Pfarrerstochtern" - oder? Eine autobiographische Zwischenbilanz (Paul Neff Verlag, Vienna, 1989). Records: several singles and albums including the multilingual folk LP Du, Du liegst mir im Herzen. Television: The Dean Martin Show, Bob Hope specials, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Hollywood Squares, The Muppet Show, The Love Boat, Painting with Elke Sommer and The Exciting World of Speed and Beauty. Playboy pictorials in September 1964 and December 1967.

Sommer's long feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor began when both appeared on Circus of the Stars in 1984. It escalated into a libel suit, and in December 1993 a Los Angeles court awarded Sommer about $3.3 million in damages from Gabor and her husband Frederic von Anhalt over defamatory remarks published in two German publications in 1990. Her 1975 Carry On Behind fee and her sex-symbol image also drew press attention throughout her career.

Elke Sommer died at her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, at about 10 pm on Wednesday 28 October 2026, aged 85, a week before her 86th birthday. Bild, citing her closest friends and photographer Erwin Schneider, reported that she died peacefully of heart failure after being bedridden for a long time. Her health had declined steadily since her husband Wolf Walther died on 22 July 2026. Her stepson Sebastian Walther, who had promised his father to look after her, cared for her to the end. Her last wish was to be buried in the family grave in Marloffstein, Bavaria, beside her parents; the transfer of the urns was expected to take months.