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Elke Sommer, the prolific German star known for her roles in the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, the Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None, and the British sex comedy Carry on Behind, has died at the age of 85. Bild magazine reported that Sommer passed away in Los Angeles from heart failure.
From Beauty Pageant to European Cinema
Born Elke Schletz in Berlin in 1940 to a Protestant pastor, she and her family were evacuated to Bavaria during the Second World War. While intending to pursue a career as an interpreter, she won a beauty contest during a 1958 trip to Italy and caught the attention of Italian director Vittorio De Sica. This encounter led to roles in several Italian comedy films before she transitioned into more serious dramatic work in the West German film The Death Ship alongside Horst Buchholz.
Hollywood Breakthrough and Career Highlights
Blessed with a natural gift for languages, Sommer made her English-language film debut in the 1961 British comedy Don’t Bother to Knock opposite Richard Todd. By 1963, she was recognized alongside Melina Mercouri, Jeanne Moreau, and Romy Schneider as one of the six most exciting women in the world in Carl Foreman’s war fable The Victors. Her major Hollywood breakthrough occurred that same year when she starred alongside Paul Newman as his love interest in The Prize, earning a joint Golden Globe award for most promising newcomer.
Her American career gained significant momentum when she embraced a glamorous persona as a murder-suspect maid in A Shot in the Dark, the sequel to The Pink Panther starring Peter Sellers. This success brought a wave of prominent Hollywood projects, including The Art of Love with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar with Stephen Boyd, and the Bob Hope comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! In 1968, she attained leading status in The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz, portraying an East German athlete who pole-vaults across the Berlin Wall.
Later Career and Personal Life
During the 1970s, Sommer starred in two cult horror films directed by Mario Bava, titled Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil, as well as the British sex comedies Percy and Percy’s Progress. She subsequently took on major roles in the 1974 Christie adaptation And Then There Were None and the 1975 comedy Carry on Behind. Following appearances in The Prisoner of Zenda and A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, she reduced her film work to focus on painting.
In the mid-1980s, she became involved in an extended legal dispute with Zsa Zsa Gabor after the two appeared together on the television program Circus of the Stars, resulting in Sommer being awarded $3.3 million in defamation damages. She was married twice, first to writer Joe Hyams from 1964 until 1981, and later to hotelier Wolf Walther from 1993 until his death in 2026.
