Elke Sommer has died: life's path towards Hollywood

afp | She filmed with Paul Newman, Peter Sellers and Dean Martin, was an actress, sex symbol and the embodiment of the German Miss Miracle all in one: Elke Sommer, German actress, died in her home in Hollywood, a few days before her 86th birthday. The Bild newspaper reported this, citing friends of Sommer.

“Once you're a Hollywood star, you stay that way for life,” Sommer once said in an interview. She spent part of her time in small Marloffstein in Franconia and the other part in Los Angeles in the USA. The contrasting places of residence were a conscious decision and also fit Sommer's character - here the down-to-earth, there the glamorous - this is how her life path can be summarized well.

However, the actress lived exclusively in the USA for the last months of her life. According to media reports, she and her fourth husband Wolf Walther decided to do so because his cancer could be better treated there. The hotelier died in July - so Sommer was able to let go herself. “The good Lord should take me when my husband no longer needs me,” she said to the colorful one a year ago.

Sommer was born on November 5, 1940 in Berlin-Spandau under her birth name Elke von Schletz, the only daughter of a Protestant pastor from an old aristocratic family; she is a baroness by birth. In 1942 the family was brought to safety in Franconian Switzerland.

When her father died, Elke was 15 years old - a big shock for the young girl, who from then on tried to take her life into her own hands. She dropped out of high school and went to London as an au pair when she was 17, where she also completed a language school.

As a reward, the mother drove Elke to Viareggio. The daughter won a beauty contest in the Italian seaside resort, the first step towards a film career. A director saw her photo in the newspaper and hired her for a film production in Rome. From now on she called herself Summer.

After the first film, she also caught the attention of German producers. Her first major leading role was in “The Girl and the Prosecutor” in the summer of 1961.

The film received several awards and was also sold in the USA - and Sommer received a very special call in Erlangen. “Would you like to make a film with Paul Newman?” the caller from the USA asked, she later said. She later received the Golden Globe for Best Newcomer of the Year for her role in “The Prize.” She is said to have been friends with Newman until his death in 2008 - as was with Peter Sellers, with whom she played in the "Pink Panther" series and who even wanted to marry her.

The fact that Sommer lived in the USA for many years was not just due to her professional career. Despite some successes in her hundred or so films, some recognition as a theater actress and many television appearances such as in the “Muppet Show”, the big breakthrough never came. Rather, Sommer initially stayed in the USA because of her marriage to the journalist Joe Hyams in 1964. The marriage ended in divorce in 1981.

In addition to acting, Sommer increasingly focused on painting as a passion. Sommer regularly had to smile about her image as a sex symbol. “It also amused me, because I am a sex symbol who has only had four men in his life,” she once told the Bunte.