Elke Sommer Dies: ‘A Shot In The Dark’, ‘The Wrecking Crew’ Actor Was 85

Elke Sommer, the cool blonde star whose distinctive German accent and regal bearing lent her a certain exotic quality that she brought to such 1960s films as, among others, Pink Panther 1964 sequel A Shot in the Dark, Bob Hope’s 1966 comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! and, that same year, The Oscar starring the 1968 Matt Helm spy entry The Wrecking Crew, died Wednesday, October 28, of heart failure at her home in Bel-Air, California. She was 85. Her death was announced by her stepson Sebastian Walther, through a spokesperson, to the German newspaper Bild. The statement read, “Elke passed away peacefully around 10 p.m. Now she can finally be with her beloved husband again.” Sommers husband, German hotelier Wolf Walther, died three months ago, on July 22. Born Elke Schletz on November 5, 1940, in Berlin, to a family headed by her Lutheran minister father, Sommer moved briefly to London in 1957 and the following year while vacationing in Italy, was noticed by film director Vittorio De Sica, who began casting her in films. She changed her surname to Sommer at that point. Watch on Deadline Her breakthrough came in 1963’s The Prize, a spy film and romantic comedy starring Paul Newman (Sommer was named the Golden Globe’s Most Promising Newcomer Actress for her performance.) The following year brought A Shot in the Dark, the second in the durable Pink Panther franchise starring Peter Sellers. Sommers’ popularity continued through a string of 1960s films, many of them caper-style thrillers tinged with comedy and romance, and pairing Sommer with established leading men. There was The Art of Love in ’65 with James Garner, The Oscar with Stephen Boyd in 1966 and, that same year, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! with Bob Hope and Deadlier Than the Male, a Bulldog Drummond spy movie with Richard Johnson; and, in ’68, The Wrecking Crew, one of her more popular entries starring Dean Martin as spy Matt Helm (the film also featured Sharon Tate and would be the last of Tate’s movies released before her murder in 1969). Through the mid-1970s, Sommer appeared in thriller Zeppelin, Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, Italian horror films Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil (the latter a 1972 film re-released in 1975 with additional scenes featuring Sommer and retitled House of Exorcism to piggyback on the popularity of The Exorcist). Sommer, who several albums as a cabaret singer, increasingly worked in Europe though the ’70s, including the 1979 comedy The Prisoner of Zenda with her old Panther co-star Sellers. As her film career began to wane, Sommer shifted to television in the 1980s and ’90s, and she portrayed the wife of Joseph Goebbels in the 1982 ABC miniseries Inside the Third Reich. She frequently appeared on the NBC variety show hosted by her old Wrecking Crew co-star Dean Martin, and guested on St. Elsewhere, The Love Boat and other shows. She even made a memorable appearance on The Muppet Show. In 1984, Sommer appeared on the CBS reality competition series Circus of the Stars, which led to a real-life feud and legal battle with Zsa Zsa Gabor. According to reports at the time, Gabor apparently heard Sommer crack a joke about Gabor’s weight – “Poor horse,” Sommer reportedly said when Gabor mounted the saddle, a quip overheard by Gabor, who then told a German news outlet that Sommer was destitute, hung out in sleazy bars, was balding and earned a living selling hand-knitted sweaters. Sommer sued Gabor and Gabor’s husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt for defamation and emotional distress, ultimately winning $3.3 million in general and punitive damages in Santa Monica Superior Court. Sommer married Hollywood newspaper columnist Joe Hyams in 1964 (they divorced in 1981). She was married to hotelier Walther from 1993 until his death from cancer three months ago. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.