In 1965 Elke Sommer epitomised the show business cliché of the sensational newcomer who in reality has been working unrecognised for several years. She starred in two major box office successes, evoking comments on her overnight climb to the top, when in fact she had already made twenty five films.

She was born Elke Schletz in 1940 in Berlin to a clergyman who died when she was in her teens. As a schoolgirl she discovered she had a talent for painting and languages, and her teen-age ambition was to be a diplomatic translator at the United Nations. To perfect her English she worked as an au-pair girl in Chigwell and Hampstead, two expensive residential areas of London.

In 1958 while Elke and her mother were on holiday in Italy, Elke was invited to appear in a movie. On discovering that her acting fee would be sufficient to finance her linguistic studies, Elke accepted the offer and appeared in "L'Amico Del Giaguaro", not intending to make a career in movies. However further offers followed promptly and Elke made five films in Italy and two in Germany within two years.

Elke now realised that acting was a worthwhile proposition. Accepting her first English language part, she returned to London in 1960 for "Don't Bother To Knock" (a.k.a. "Why Bother To Knock?"), a comedy about a confirmed bachelor (Richard Todd) who gives a key to his apartment to various girls who, of course, all turn up at the same time.

Elke received the full promotional treatment on this movie, being photographed and interviewed - her detailed knowledge of the London Underground was much commented on - and appearing on the front cover of "ABC Film Review". The main thrust of this publicity was to suggest that Elke was a sex symbol in the European tradition of Martine Carole and Sophia Loren. Most of the photographs of Elke showed her in a bikini, and revealed that although she was nothing like as buxom as Sophia Loren, Elke had a flat stomach and superb legs. Elke was publicised far more than any other member of the cast even though there were other attractive young actresses in the film. "Don't Bother To Knock" was not a particularly good film and nowadays does not even appear on British television, but it certainly made Elke Sommer well known.

Elke by now was fluent in several languages, and for the next three years made numerous films in France, Germany and Italy.

In 1963 she was invited to join the cast of "The Victors" by Carl Foreman who planned to produce and direct as well as write the screenplay. (When making "The Bridge On The River Kwai" David Lean had given short shrift to Foreman's original screenplay, and Michael Wilson was hired to re-write it. Foreman responded by insisting for several years that David Lean had ruined his masterpiece!) Foreman, whose screenplays had often shown a contempt for the intelligence and will-power of 'ordinary people', was determined to make an 'anti-war' picture to give the general public the benefit of his superior intelligence and morality. "The Victors" has not survived but, given that Foreman's ego was far greater than his talent, the film is not as bad as it might have been. Some sections work dramatically and are interesting, but most of "The Victors" is simplistic and turgid. However this did no harm to Elke who received considerable publicity when it was reported that she filmed her scenes twice, with a sexier version made for the European market. Reflecting Carl Foreman's obsession with European women fraternising with American soldiers, Elke played a German girl who sexually gratifies her American boyfriend (George Hamilton) with the full knowledge of her parents because he brings chocolate to the family home.

Elke was invited to Hollywood to appear opposite Paul Newman and Peter Sellers, both at the peaks of their careers. "The Prize" was an enjoyable thriller, skillfully written by Ernest Lehman who re-used some of the ideas that had worked so well in his screenplay for "North By Northwest". As photographed by the great William Daniels, Elke was an extremely attractive heroine, chaperoning an alcoholic writer (Paul Newman) who becomes involved in an espionage plot.  The film did well at the box-office but not as well as "A Shot In The Dark", where Peter Sellers reprised his role as Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling, incompetent French police detective. A scene with Sellers and Elke in a nudist camp received enormous publicity.

Suddenly Elke was a hot property and there was much discussion in the media about how she had burst overnight on the scene. In 1965 Elke had the first public exhibition of her paintings and Elke - or her agent - capitalised on this by publicising both her painting and her gift for languages.

However Elke was not able to sustain the level of achievement she had attained with her first two Hollywood movies. During the mid 1960s Hollywood was undergoing a change it did not at the time comprehend, and far fewer movies were being made. Quite quickly Elke began to slip downhill. She appeared in several small, routine movies, sometimes being simply one member of a large cast.

Some of these unpretentious films are still quite watchable. "The Money Trap", for example, is an enjoyable crime melodrama where Elke is the wife of a policeman (Glenn Ford) who deviates into crime while rekindling an affair with an old flame (Rita Hayworth). When it all goes wrong, Elke's character promises to stick with her doomed husband.

In the mid '60s Elke married the Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams and settled in America. For a time her publicity concentrated on the fact that a European beauty had married an American, and later there was much talk that their house was haunted! (When Joe Hyams criticised Roman Polanski in his column, Polanski retaliated by publicly referring to Hyams as 'Mr. Elke Sommer'.)

Although Elke was now a Hollywood star, she continued to make films in Europe as well as America. In 1966 she returned to England to work on "Deadlier Than The Male", a film that has minor cult status, mainly because Richard Johnson gives a superb James Bond-like performance, but also because Elke and Silva Koscina were so eye-catching as two sexually-charged assassins.

This was to be the characteristic of Elke Sommer's career thereafter. She was nearly always cast as an obviously alluring woman, often wearing very sexy clothes. For example, Elke's first scene in "The Wrecking Crew" shows her in a glamorous dress with a very revealing neckline.  She worked constantly until the mid 1980s in various countries, making one film after another, some of them enjoyable if unambitious, others seriously beneath her dignity. Her looks did not deteriorate and she remained an attractive leading lady well into her forties.

When eventually her movie career faltered, Elke worked in television and theatre where she also directed. She re-concentrated on her painting, had several exhibitions in galleries, and even hosted a T V series on painting.

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