Elke Sommer, Pink Panther Star and Golden Globe Winner, Dies at 85

Elke Sommer, the German actress who starred opposite Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, died on Wednesday at her home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 85. Her stepson Sebastian Walther told the German outlet Bild that Sommer died of heart failure after an extended period of illness. "Elke passed away peacefully around 10 p.m. Now she can finally be with her beloved husband again," Walther told the outlet. Sommer would have turned 86 on Nov. 5.

Her husband Wolf Walther died in July after a battle with cancer. A friend, Erwin Schneider, told Bild that Sommer could never have imagined a life without her husband, that her health had steadily declined since his death, and that she had become bed-bound in recent months. "Now Elke has finally been able to join him," Schneider said.

A beauty contest opens the door

Sommer was born Elke Schletz in Berlin on Nov. 5, 1940. She first hoped to become an interpreter, and Bild reported that she could speak six languages by the time she was in her teens. Her life changed on a vacation in Italy, where she won the Miss Viareggio beauty contest at 17 in 1958. The win brought her to the attention of director Vittorio De Sica and opened the door to acting, first in European films and then in Hollywood. Across her career she appeared in about 100 film and television productions.

The Prize and the Pink Panther

Sommer made her Hollywood breakthrough in the 1963 film The Prize, opposite Paul Newman. The performance earned her the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer in 1964. That same year she played Maria Gambrelli in A Shot in the Dark, the Pink Panther sequel directed by Blake Edwards. In the film her character, a maid suspected of murder, is defended by Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, who insists on her innocence. The role made her one of the best known European stars in Hollywood.

Her other films included The Art of Love, The Oscar, the Bob Hope comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!, The Wrecking Crew with Dean Martin, And Then There Were None and The Prisoner of Zenda. She also appeared in Playboy pictorials published in September 1964, December 1967 and September 1970, and she pursued painting, singing and theater alongside her screen work.

Television and later years

Sommer was a familiar face on American television, with guest appearances on series that included The Six Million Dollar Man, St. Elsewhere, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. Her final credited performance was in 2017, when she voiced the character Nette in the animated short A Thousand Kisses. She had stepped away from public life in her later years.

Sommer married twice. Her first marriage, to Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams, lasted from 1964 to 1981. She married Wolf Walther in 1993, and the two stayed together until his death this year.