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Elke Sommer

Elke Sommer

Acting

November 5, 1940 (85 years old)
Berlin, Germany
Female
97 Movies
58 TV Shows

Elke Sommer, born Elke von Schletz, is a German actress, entertainer and artist, who has starred in many Hollywood films. She was spotted by film director Vittorio De Sica while on holiday in Italy, and began appearing in films there in 1958. Also that year, she changed her surname from Schletz to Sommer, which was easier to pronounce for a non-German audience. 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, including the September 1964 and December 1967 issues. Sommer became one of the top film actresses of the 1960s. She made just shy of 100 film and television appearances between 1959 and 2005, including A Shot in the Dark with Peter Sellers, The Art of Love with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar with Stephen Boyd, Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number! with Bob Hope, the Bulldog Drummond extravaganza Deadlier Than the Male, The Wrecking Crew with Dean Martin, and The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz. 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 sketches 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 and 1980, when Peter Marshall was its "Square-Master", or host. 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 frequently 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 act in additional scenes for Lisa and the Devil, which its producer inserted into the film to convert it to House of Exorcism, against the wishes of the director. In 1975, Peter Rogers cast her in the British comedy Carry On Behind as the Russian Professor Vrooshka.[2] She became the Carry On films' joint highest-paid performer, at £30,000; this was an honor that she shared with Phil Silvers (who starred in 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. She provided the voice for Yzma in the German release of The Emperor's New Groove. Sommer also performed as a singer, recording and releasing several albums. Description above from the Wikipedia article Elke Sommer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

A Shot in the Dark
A Shot in the Dark

A Shot in the Dark

1964 7.2

as Maria Gambrelli

Age 23 (now 85)
Lisa and the Devil
Lisa and the Devil

Lisa and the Devil

1973 6.2

as Lisa Reiner

Age 32 (now 85)
Baron Blood
Baron Blood

Baron Blood

1972 6.1

as Eva Arnold

Age 31 (now 85)
And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None

1974 5.7

as Vera Clyde

Age 33 (now 85)
The Prize
The Prize

The Prize

1963 6.7

as Inger Lisa Andersson

Age 23 (now 85)
Carry On Behind
Carry On Behind

Carry On Behind

1975 5.5

as Professor Anna Vooshka

Age 34 (now 85)
The Wrecking Crew
The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew

1968 5.7

as Linka Karensky

Age 28 (now 85)
Frontier Hellcat
Frontier Hellcat

Frontier Hellcat

1964 6.4

as Annie Dillman

Age 24 (now 85)
Deadlier Than the Male
Deadlier Than the Male

Deadlier Than the Male

1967 5.9

as Irma Eckman

Age 26 (now 85)
Zeppelin
Zeppelin

Zeppelin

1971 6.2

as Erika Altschul

Age 30 (now 85)
Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!
Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!

Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!

1966 5.3

as Didi

Age 25 (now 85)
The House of Exorcism
The House of Exorcism

The House of Exorcism

1975 4.5

as Lisa Reiner

Age 34 (now 85)
They Came to Rob Las Vegas
They Came to Rob Las Vegas

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

1968 5.9

as Ann Bennett

Age 27 (now 85)
The Prisoner of Zenda
The Prisoner of Zenda

The Prisoner of Zenda

1979 5.7

as Countess Montparnasse

Age 38 (now 85)
The Money Trap
The Money Trap

The Money Trap

1965 5.1

as Lisa Baron

Age 24 (now 85)
Ship of the Dead
Ship of the Dead

Ship of the Dead

1959 6.6

as Mylène Loureau

Age 18 (now 85)