Elke Sommer
Elke Sommer (born November 5, 1940 in Berlin ; actually Elke Schletz ) is a German actress , singer and painter who appeared in almost 100 film and television roles from 1959. In the 1960s she made the leap to Hollywood as a sex symbol , a novelty for a German actress. Her best-known films include the Blake Edwards comedy A Shot in the Dark alongside Peter Sellers from 1964, which is part of the Pink Panther series .
Life
Elke Sommer was born under the name Elke Schletz as the only child of Renata Topp and the Protestant pastor Peter Schletz. Her family was evacuated from Berlin to Niederndorf (Herzogenaurach) in Franconia in 1942 . She lost her father at the age of 14. She left grammar school without a high school diploma just one year after completing secondary school.
During an au pair stay in London , she received foreign language training and wanted to become an interpreter . Today she speaks six languages fluently. In 1964 she moved to Beverly Hills in the USA and married the journalist and writer Joe Hyams . In 1970 she posed for Playboy ; She was photographed by her husband. The marriage, which suffered a total of three miscarriages during the summer, ended in divorce in 1981. In 1993 she married the hotelier Wolf Walther, who was eight years her junior. The second marriage also remained childless. However, her husband has two grown children, Sebastian and Caroline.
Career
During a vacation in 1958 with her mother in Italy , she was surprisingly voted Miss this place in a café in the city of Viareggio . Because of the subsequently published photos of "Miss Viareggio", which caused a sensation, the Italian film producer Vittorio De Sica brought her to Rome .
In the same year, 1958, the first Italian film was made with her. She changed her name to summer because, in her opinion, Schletz sounded too difficult for audiences abroad. In 1959 she got a three-year contract from the Berlin producer Artur Brauner and shot her first German film Das Totenschiff at the side of Horst Buchholz . In 1962 she made the leap to Hollywood . In total, she appeared in more than 70 cinema and television films; however, she did not make the big breakthrough. During training for the filming of The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz , during which she had to jump the Berlin Wall as a GDR pole vaulter, she trained for weeks at UCLA three to four hours a day with a sports teacher from the university in 1967 . Since 1966 she made a name for herself under the pseudonym “E. Schwartz ”as a painter and presented her works in exhibitions all over the world. Painting is her main profession today.
Most of the time she was committed to the role of the blonde sex bomb in the films. Occasionally she was confused as a person with her film roles, but mostly identified with the (equally stereotypical) educated Franconian pastor's daughter. Oswalt Kolle and Siegfried Sommer , for example, used the term Erlanger pastor's daughter for summer. In 1975, in the “Year of Women” of the UN , she defended nudity against shame in a dispute with the conductor Hortense von Gelmini in the program The Hot Wire ( hosted by Joachim Fuchsberger ).
In addition to her film career, she appeared on numerous American talk shows , also in the Muppet Show (1978) and began acting in the theater from 1970 . Sommer's attempt to exploit her fame through the film for a career in singing began with failure . A second attempt, supported years later by Gert Wilden , to gain a foothold in the music sector, was a great success. She sang in eight languages on the folk album You, You Lie in My Heart . Several more music albums followed.
Filmography
- 1959: L'amico del giaguaro
- 1959: La pica sul Pacifico
- 1959: Ragazzi del juke box
- 1959: The death ship
- 1959: The day the rain came
- 1960: stage fright
- 1960: Urlatori alla sbarra
- 1960: Uomini e nobiluomini
- 1960: Heaven, Cupid and Thread
- 1960: Sappho, Venus of Lesbos (Saffo, venere di Lesbo)
- 1960: luxury female (Femmine di lusso)
- 1961: And that's called life
- 1961: Soft skin in black silk (De quoi tu te mêles Daniela!)
- 1961: Come in without knocking (Don't Bother to Knock)
- 1961: Beloved impostor
- 1961: Goodbye
- 1962: The phone went off at night
- 1962: Café Oriental
- 1962: They Call It Love (Douce violence)
- 1962: The girl and the public prosecutor
- 1962: Le Chien (TV movie)
- 1962: Un chien dans un jeu quilles
- 1962: Play and Passion (Bahía de Palma)
- 1963: Casual Worker (Les Bricoleurs)
- 1963: Seduction by the sea
- 1963: The winners (The Victors)
- 1963: ... because music and love in Tyrol
- 1963: The prize (The Prize)
- 1964: Seven Tons of Gunfire
- 1964: A Shot in the Dark (A Shot in the Dark)
- 1964: Among vultures
- 1965: The Dolls (Le bambole)
- 1965: Hotel of the dead guests
- 1965: With Madame Coco (The Art of Love)
- 1965: A thousand beats of high spirits
- 1965: Gold Trap ( The Money Trap )
- 1965: ... because nobody is without guilt ( The Oscar )
- 1966: Completely wrongly connected! ( Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! )
- 1966: Midnight - Canale Grande (The Venetian Affair)
- 1966: The hell of Macau
- 1966: Hot Cats ( Deadlier Than The Male )
- 1968: The Wicked Dreams Of Paula Schultz
- 1968: One Friday in Las Vegas
- 1968: Rollkommando ( The Wrecking Crew )
- 1970: The Dirty Heroes of Yucca ( The Invincible Six )
- 1971: Percy - Sparrow in hand ( Percy )
- 1971: Zeppelin
- 1971: Perlico - Perlaco (TV movie)
- 1972: Rehearsal (TV movie)
- 1972: Baron Blood ( Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga )
- 1973: The trip to Vienna
- 1974: The Devilish ( Lisa e il diavolo )
- 1974: One of us both
- 1974: Percy - The Potency Man ( Percy's Progress )
- 1974: An unknown settles (And Then There Were None)
- 1975: The network
- 1975: The total verrückte mummy Schreck ( Carry On Behind )
- 1976: One Away
- 1976: The Transformer - His hatred was stronger than prison walls ( The Astral Factor )
- 1976: Murder on balance
- 1976: The dead pave his way ( Pronto ad Uccidere )
- 1976: The Six Million Dollar Man ( The Six Million Dollar Man ) (TV series, episode 4x05)
- 1977: Not Yesterday (TV series)
- 1978: Under the Spell of Death ( I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses )
- 1979: The Treasure Seekers
- 1979: The Supercoup ( A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square )
- 1979: The Prisoner of Zenda ( The Prisoner of Zenda )
- 1979: Seven stunt men clean up ( The Fantastic Seven , TV movie)
- 1979: The Double McGuffin
- 1980: Exit Sunset Boulevard
- 1980: Reaching for the Stars ( Top Of the Hill ) (TV movie)
- 1981–1984: Love Boat (TV series, 4 episodes)
- 1981: Fantasy Island (TV movie, episode 5x06)
- 1981: The man in the pajamas
- 1982: Inside the Third Reich (TV movie)
- 1984: Married to a star ( Lily in Love )
- 1984: Nobody cries forever
- 1985: Jenny's War (TV movie)
- 1986: Peter the Great (mini-series)
- 1986: Chief Physician Dr. Westphall ( St. Elsewhere , TV series, episode 5x04)
- 1986: Anastasia ( Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna ) (TV movie)
- 1986: Adventures Beyond Belief (TV movie)
- 1986: The Stone of Death - Death Stone
- 1989: Himmelsheim
- 1992: The Thing (Severed Ties)
- 1992: On your own ( Counterstrike , TV series, episode 3x05)
- 1993: Happy Holiday (TV series, episode 1x04)
- 1993: Destiny Ridge (TV series, 1 episode)
- 1994: Florian III (TV series, leading role)
- 1996: Everything just camouflage
- 1998: Double play with Anne
- 1999: Gisbert (TV series, episode 1x01)
- 2000: Not with us (TV movie)
- 2000: Flashback - Murderous Vacation
- 2005: Phylloxera (TV movie)
- 2005: The money rushes forever (TV movie)
- 2010: life is too long
Synchronizations
- 1963: The prize (The Prize)
- 1964: A Shot in the Dark (A Shot in the Dark)
- 1986: The Stone of Death (Death Stone)
- 2000: A Kingdom for a Lama ( The Emperor's New Groove )
Discography
Singles
- 1961: Be not notty / The Faithful Hussar
- 1962: We are friends / darling
- 1962: Adieu, Adieu / The phone went off at night
- 1964: Cowboy-Shake / Hey, hey, hey, I'm looking for a boy
- 1965: I say no / it could be
- 1965: Hully-Gully Italiano / Miss Cumberland
- 1965: That's not enough for me / Oh, I Love You
- 1965: It was a summer in Normandy / I'm walking along the beach
- 1970: I can live just fine without you / As long as the world keeps turning
- 1972: So bang on fall / tears in the sand
EP
- 1973: I need you so much
Albums
- 1965: Love in Any Language ( MGM , USA)
- 1965: I love you ( Polydor , Germany)
- 1972: You, you are close to my heart (PoP, Germany)
- 1977: Elke Sommer (Cantagallo, Germany)
- 1999: That alone can't be everything (CD)
Radio plays
- 2001: A Kingdom for a Lama - The original radio play for the film , Walt Disney Records, ISBN 3-89780-162-0
Awards
- 1963: Golden Globe Award for Best Young Actress for Der Preis
- 1967, 1968: Bambi
- 1972, 1973: Best Theater Actress of the Year (Chicago)
- 2000: DIVA Award
- 2017: Honorary Actor Award of the Eat My Shorts - Hagen Short Film Festival
- 2018: Tourism and Media Prize Golden Sun (Lifetime Achievement 60 Years of International Film)
- 2019: Bavarian Order of Merit
Web links
- Elke Sommer in the German dubbing file
- Elke Sommer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Elke Sommer at filmportal.de
- Literature by and about Elke Sommer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Elke Sommer's website
- Pictures by Elke Sommer In: Virtual History
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.welt.de/kultur/article10750882/Elke-Sommer-die-Sauerkraut-Bardot-wird-70.html
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/filmosearch?explore=title_type&role=nm0813961&ref_=filmo_ref_job_typ&sort=num_votes,desc&mode=detail&page=1&title_type=movie
- ↑ Elke Sommer: The official website - curriculum vitae, page 3. In: elkesommeronline.com. Accessed December 31, 2018 .
- ↑ Personal details . In: Der Spiegel 16/1967 , April 10, 1967
- ↑ Elke Sommer . ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Sächsische Zeitung , November 5, 2005
- ↑ A big thing brings in more . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1968, p. 84 ( online - taking over an interview with Sommer in the Münchner Abendzeitung ).
- ↑ Oswalt Kolle: I am so free: my life . Rowohlt, Berlin 2008, p. 128
- ↑ Karl Borromäus Glock: "Eighty Years - Encounters with a Hundred Well-Known Contemporaries", Nuremberg 1985, p. 31 "When Fuchsberger once ... collected the favorite self-portrayal of well-known artists on television, Elke Sommer pleaded for nudity, Hortense von Gelmini - von Fuchsberger asked about a possible alternative, said only two words: The shame "
- ↑ Award ceremony 2019
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Summer, Elke |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Schletz, Elke (maiden name); E. Schwartz (pseudonym as painter) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German actress, singer, director and painter |
DATE OF BIRTH | November 5, 1940 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin , Germany |