Elke Sommer, the German-American screen star best known for glamorous roles in Carry On Behind and The Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark, has died at the age of 85 – and just months after the death of her husband.
According to the German newspaper Bilt, Sommer died on Wednesday (28 October), with her photographer friend Erwin Schneider telling the outlet that Sommer “could never have imagined a life without her beloved ‘Papa Bear’,” – in reference to her husband Wolf Walther, who died in July at the age of 77.
Schneider said Sommer’s health declined in the wake of Walther’s death, adding: “Now Elke has finally been able to join him.”
Born in Nazi Germany in 1940 with the name Elke Schletz, Sommer moved to London in 1957 to work as an au pair, before being spotted by a photographer while on holiday in Italy. After becoming a model and changing her surname, Sommer became one of the most successful pin-up girls of the era, posing for Playboy magazine and transitioning into films.
She starred alongside Sharon Tate in 1968 spy comedy The Wrecking Crew – which memorably played a significant role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – and Peter Sellers in A Shot in the Dark (1964) and Paul Newman in The Prize (1963).
She made her only appearance in the Carry On franchise in 1975, starring as archaeologist Professor Anna Vooshka in Carry On Behind. Her other credits included Ten Little Indians (1974) and the classic animated film The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), where she voiced the German dub of its evil villainess Yzma.
Off-screen, Sommer was also well known for her long-running feud with the Hungarian-American socialite and movie star Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died in 2016. The feud reportedly began in 1984 when both appeared in the television special Circus of the Stars. Sommer claimed that she was overheard remarking “poor horse” when she witnessed Gabor mount one of the animals backstage.
Gabor, meanwhile, claimed that Sommer was explicitly rude to her in regards to the horse, and that she in fact said that “Zsa Zsa has such a big behind that she could not even manage to get on the horse by herself” – something Sommer insisted was untrue.
Sommer later sued Gabor and her husband Frederick von Anhalt for defaming her in the press. In 1993, Sommer was awarded $3.3m (approximately £2.2m at the time) in damages from the pair, and said of her victory: “I felt my dignity had been taken away, and now it’s been restored.”
Gabor, however, was furious, telling the press: “I’d rather see her starve to death than give her one single dollar. I used to like that girl. I liked her until I saw her calling me a fat pig. Then, I decided I didn’t like her anymore.”
Sommer largely retired from acting in the Nineties, finding a love for painting and making a home in Los Angeles.
In 2014, she said in a rare interview that despite receiving occasional acting offers, she’d rather stay home and paint.
“I am dreaming of a role that’s really different,” she explained. “I would love to play an old hooker or a toothless street person. When this dream part comes along, I will shout it from the mountaintops. Until then, I can finally enjoy what I have, time with my husband and with our dog and my beautiful houses here in Beverly Hills and in Germany – life in a pure and unobstructed form.”
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