Career

Sommer was born in Berlin to a Lutheran minister and his wife, Renata (nee Topp). After the Second World War, the family was evacuated to Erlangen, a small university town in Southern Germany, where 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 while 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 film actresses of the 1960s and made 99 film 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 (1968) with Dean Martin; Sommer was the leading lady in each of these films.

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 skits 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 1973-80.

Sommer's films during the 1970s included the thriller Zeppelin, in which she co-starred with Michael York, and a remake of Agatha Christie's oft-filmed 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. The latter was subsequently re-edited (with 1975 footage inserted) to make a different film called House of Exorcism. Sommer went back to Italy to star in additional scenes that were inserted into the film by its producer, 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 Ons' highest paid performer, at £30,000 (an honour shared with Phil Silvers for 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.

Sommer also performed as a singer, making several albums.

She provided the voice for Yzma in the German release of The Emperor's New Groove.

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 has subsequently expressed on canvas. Her artwork shows a strong Marc Chagall influence. 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.

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

She now lives in Los Angeles, California.

Personal life

In 1964, she married Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams (6 June 1923 - 8 November 2008), who was 17 years older, in Las Vegas in front of a Justice of the Peace. Sommer suffered her first miscarriage while working on the set of The Money Trap, in which she co-starred with Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth.

A 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, Sommer and 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 von Schletz, accompanied her to film sets as well as on cinema tours even after Elke Sommer’s marriage to Joe Hyams had failed and a new man came into her life: Tom Bohla. Bohla moved in with Sommer, who had separated from her husband, but was still sharing the house with him and had no intention to file for divorce.

Then she met Wolf Walther, eight years her junior and the general manager of New York City's luxury hotel Essex House. They were married on 29 August 1993 in Franconia. In a 2014 interview, Sommer described how she and Walther met:

"I was in New York City starring in Tamara and had to stay there for four months. So, I had to find an apartment but they were excruciatingly expensive, tiny and loud. As I knew the managing director of the Essex House, I wanted to talk to him about renting a room but the hotel had a new managing director, a man by the name of Wolf Walther. So we met. For him, it was love at first sight. For me, it took a little longer, but not much longer. As you may know, Tamara is a play, in which the audience follows the actor of their choice, and as you may also know, my husband is 6'5" and hard to miss. I saw him every night in the audience, following me. Every night. And that was the beginning of the greatest love story of my life, still unfolding and getting better by the day."

Selected filmography

• Uomini e nobiluomini (it) (1959)
• Ragazzi del Juke-Box (1959)
• The Death Ship (1959)
• Am Tag, als der Regen kam (de) (1959)
• La Pica sul Pacifico (1959)
• The Friend of the Jaguar (1959)
• Howlers in the Dock (1960)
• Himmel, Amor und Zwirn (1960)
• Saffo - Venere di Lesbo (1960)
• Femmine di lusso (1960)
• Daniella by Night (1961)
• Don't Bother to Knock (1961)
• Geliebte Hochstaplerin (1961)
• Auf Wiedersehen (1961)
• Café Oriental (1962)
• Douce violence (1962)
• Das Mädchen und der Staatsanwalt (1962)
• The Phone Rings Every Night (1962)
• Les Bricoleurs (1963)
• Ostrava (1963)
• The Victors (1963)
• The Prize (1963)
• A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• Among Vultures (1964)
• Hotel der toten Gäste (1965)
• Le bambole (1965) UK title: Four Kinds of Love
• The Art of Love (1965)
• The Money Trap (1965)
• The Oscar (1966)
• Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)
• The Venetian Affair (1967)
• The Peking Medallion (1967) (aka The Corrupt Ones)
• Deadlier Than the Male (1967)
• The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968)
• They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968)
• The Wrecking Crew (1969)
• The Invincible Six (1970)
• Percy (1971)
• Zeppelin (1971)
• Baron Blood (1972)
• Probe (1972)
• Trip to Vienna (1973)
• Lisa and the Devil (1974)
• Percy's Progress (1974)
• Ten Little Indians (1974) (aka And Then There Were None)
• One or the Other of Us (1974)
• The Net (1975)
• Carry On Behind (1975)
• The Swiss Conspiracy (1976)
• One Away (1976)
• The Astral Factor (1976)
• Meet Him and Die (1976)
• I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses (1978) (aka Drop Dead Dearest)
• The Treasure Seekers (1979)
• The Double McGuffin (1979)
• A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1979)
• The Prisoner of Zenda (1979)
• Stunt Seven (1979)
• Top of the Hill (TV movie) (1980)
• Exit Sunset Boulevard (1980)
• Der Mann im Pyjama (1981)
• Inside the Third Reich (TV miniseries) (1982)
• No One Cries Forever (1984)
• Lily in Love (1984)
• Jenny's War (TV miniseries) (1985)
• Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986)
• St. Elsewhere (TV series) (1986)
• Peter the Great (TV miniseries) (1986)
• Adventures Beyond Belief (TV series) (1987)
• Death Stone (1987)
• Himmelsheim (1988)
• Counterstrike (TV miniseries) (1992)
• Severed Ties (1992)
• Happy Holiday (TV series) (1993)
• Destiny Ridge (TV series) (1993)
• Florian III (TV series) (1994)
• Alles nur Tarnung (1996)
• Double Game with Anne - Gotta have it (1998)
• Gisbert (TV series) (1999)
• Flashback - Mörderische Ferien (de) (2000)
• Nicht mit uns (2000)
• Ewig rauschen die Gelder (2005)
• Reblaus (2005)
• Das Leben ist zu lang (de) (2010)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]