Elke Sommer, ‘The Prize’ and ‘Pink Panther’ Star, Dies at 85

Elke Sommer Dies at 85 in Los Angeles

Elke Sommer, the German-born actress who became an international film star in the 1960s through comedies, capers, and horror films, died Wednesday at her home in Bel-Air at the age of 85. Her stepson, Sebastian Walther, confirmed her death to the German magazine Bild, stating she died of heart failure, according to hollywoodreporter.com. Sommer passed away peacefully around 10 p.m., just three months after the death of her husband, German hotelier Wolf Walther.

From Berlin Wartime Evacuation to International Stardom

Born Elke Schletz in Berlin on November 5, 1940, she was the daughter of a Protestant pastor, Peter, and a homemaker, Renata. During World War II, her family evacuated the Nazi-occupied capital and relocated to Bavaria and the small town of Niederndorf. At age 17, she moved alone to London for a year to work as an au pair. While on holiday with her mother in the Italian seaside town of Viareggio, she won a beauty contest. Her photograph caught the attention of Italian director Vittorio De Sica, who offered her a role in the 1959 comedy film Men and Noblemen, launching an acting career spanning five languages.

Hollywood Breakthrough and Golden Globe Success

Sommer made her English-language film debut in the 1961 British comedy Don’t Bother to Knock. Her Hollywood breakthrough arrived in 1963 when she starred opposite Paul Newman as his love interest in The Prize, an adaptation of Irving Wallace’s novel directed by Mark Robson. For her performance, she shared a Golden Globe Award for most promising newcomer with Tippi Hedren and Ursula Andress. She gained widespread recognition for her role as the maid Maria Gambrelli in Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark, starring alongside Peter Sellers.

Genre Shifts Through European and American Productions

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Sommer appeared across multiple genres in Hollywood and European cinema. Her credits included The Art of Love with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar with Stephen Boyd, and the Bob Hope comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!. In 1968, she played an East German athlete who pole-vaults over the Berlin Wall in The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz. During the 1970s, she starred in Mario Bava’s cult horror films Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil, appeared in Agatha Christie’s adapted mystery And Then There Were None in 1974, and joined the British comedy franchise in Carry on Behind in 1975.

Late Career Focus on Painting and Personal Life

As her screen appearances slowed in later decades, Sommer concentrated on her career as a painter. In the mid-1980s, she won a high-profile defamation lawsuit against Zsa Zsa Gabor following a television appearance, receiving $3.3 million in damages. She was married twice: to writer Joe Hyams from 1964 until their divorce in 1981, and to Wolf Walther from 1993 until his death in 2026. Her passing leaves her stepson Sebastian Walther as her primary surviving family spokesperson.

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