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Written by: GARY SWEENEY

Elke Sommer is an actress whose films have spanned from horror to comedy. She has become well-known from her appearances in such films as Lisa and the Devil, A Shot in the Dark, The Oscar, The Prize, and The Victors. Over the years, she has added singing and painting to her artistic arsenal. Having won a Golden Globe Award for her role in The Prize with Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson, she began a long and interesting career full of stories and good memories. Her recently developed website, Elke Sommer Online, offers a glimpse into her personal and professional life. I recently had the great pleasure of speaking to Elke about her start in films, her favorite costars and their real-life personalities, (some of which may surprise you!), her artwork, and even the haunted house she owned in the 1960s!

MP: I’m on the phone with Elke Sommer, an actress whose career spans many decades and who has made so many memorable films with a variety of talented actors. She has acted her way through horror, comedy, and intrigue, and continues to act today in addition to singing and painting. Elke, thank you so much for your time today; it’s an honor to be speaking with you.

Elke: Well thank you very much!

MP: I know you started out overseas and I wanted to mention one of your early films – 1962’s Sweet Ecstasy. You were already familiar with the director, Max Pécas, because he’d directed you the year before in Daniella by Night. How were those early days for you as a new actress?

Elke: I was working practically my whole life once I started, never really stopping, you know? It was very nice. I had started my career in Italy, as you might know, with Vittorio De Sica, who liked me so much after I did the first movie that he hired me for a second movie. The first movie, which was with Walter Chiari, he was directing and in the second he was playing the male lead. So I had already done like four or five pictures in Italy. Then I went to Germany and then did a picture with Alain Delon in France which was called Le chien (The Dog) with François Chalais, who was a wonderful, wonderful man. With Max Pécas, it was work; what can you say? It was work; I never fell in love with any of my leading men or with anybody. The second picture I had a little bit of a problem with Mr. Pécas because he decided he liked me very much and was kind of a pain in the neck. So it was difficult working with him; and when I of course did not want to have anything but work to do with him – I remember the producer’s name was Joël Lifschutz – he sulked and refused to work for a couple of days. It was hard. It was the only time I really had problems with anybody in the motion picture business trying to really get me, you know?

MP: At any time early on in your career, were you ever concerned about being used strictly for your looks as opposed to being taken seriously as an actress?

Elke: You know, I went to a very good school and I learned nine years of Latin and six years of ancient Greek, which you needed at the time to be able to study medicine. Quite honestly, the first few movies I made, I always thought “Okay let’s make this movie and I’ll get a little bit of money, and then I don’t have to work on the side and I can pay for my studies.” My dad passed away when I was 15 and we were living on like 70 marks a month, which was like 25 bucks, you know? So actually I never thought about that because I wasn’t a movie fan, I never really was, I’m still not today. I like to see a good movie now and then but I don’t go out of my way to the movie theater; now I get them all sent by SAG so I can see most of them on a big TV screen, which is not a movie screen of course. I never even thought about that, I really honestly did not. I just knew it was tougher for somebody who looked nice to be critically better acclaimed than an Anna Magnani who looked like Anna Magnani (laughs) and threw tantrums and screamed and did things. People thought that was great; but on the other hand I never thought about it in the beginning. Later on, yes, about ten years into the career, I thought about it much more. Even the movie with Dean Martin, The Wrecking Crew – it was a nice part and I had a wonderful death, I could die very nicely and all that – but that was another one where he had a beautiful lady on his arm. So in the beginning I never thought about that. I thought that’s the way it has to be, I did my job and went home, and did the next movie.

MP: After your appearance in The Prize with Paul Newman and Edward G. Robinson, you won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer Actress. Was that significant for you, personally or professionally?

Elke: No, what was significant to me was that I had the chance to work with Paul Newman, who I absolutely adored and was also not disappointed. I wasn’t really disappointed in any of my costars, they were all fantastic besides one – his name is Jack Palance, who did not behave like a nice person, not towards me but towards Lee J. Cobb, who was in the movie [They Came to Rob Las Vegas] as well. He was bad; he was really bad and uncomfortable. Everybody else was great. And Paul and Eddie G. Robinson – they were wonderful. Also we rehearsed that movie on the soundstage like a play before we started shooting, so we knew all of our moves; Mark Robson was the director, and it was a fantastic experience and really beautiful, really incredible.

MP: I recently watched Lisa and the Devil and that was one of two films you did with director Mario Bava, the other was Baron Blood. In Lisa and the Devil, your character had very little dialogue, so your role was mainly comprised of emotions and a lot of facial expressions. Were those Bava films difficult for you to do?

Elke: No, very easy. Bava was like a papa to me, he was really like a papa to all of us. We ate together and we talked together and he was very, very good, extremely articulate in what he wanted you to do, and you did it. You know, in a way – when you’re on stage it’s a different story – but in a way, when you do movies - even in my last one, it was my 95th I just finished in Europe – I like being directed, I like it very much. Of course your own personality plays a big part in it but when I trust the director, which was not always, not in every picture, but you do what he asks you and you play it until he’s happy. And with Bava it was a cinch, it really was.

MP: So he interacted well with his cast?

Elke: Very, very. He really was like a papa figure – great sense of humor, great buddy, and very good director. What was funny about The Prize, which I meant to say before, was - Pandro Berman, who was the producer, we always had lunch at MGM in the commissary – one day he asked whether he could have lunch with me, I said “Sure, of course, we’re there every day anyhow”. All these ladies walked by with the long legs and 64 teeth and loads of hair and all that (laughs) – he had seen a movie which I did called The Girl and the Prosecutor and he had seen that at some foreign thing here. So anyhow, I said “Look at all these women, my God, 64 teeth, long beautiful legs, no gap in the middle of their teeth and so much hair. Why did you pick me?” He said, “Honey, you won’t see it yourself but surely everybody else sees it. If you look on that screen when we see rushes, there’s an aura about you which none of these have. It doesn’t matter how beautiful they are; it doesn’t matter. There’s just something around you which is great.” So they gave me a little thing to stick between the gap in my teeth in front. I’m more like a country girl, you know; I hate makeup, I hate [having] my hair done and all that. So I had to put it in before we were shooting and three times I ate an apple and I swallowed it (laughs)! After the third time they gave up. They said “That’s it! Jesus Christ Elke! Take the little thing out after the scene!” Anyhow, [there were] cute things like that but everybody was extremely kind and I think I learned to really appreciate what I was being offered and what I was doing. But it took me a while because I thought after five or six pictures at the beginning, I’m going to go back to study medicine anyhow. So I didn’t take it as seriously as I did after it became my life.

MP: Another interesting note about Lisa and the Devil, which some people may not know, is that it was never released in the United States in its original form. It was re-edited and renamed House of Exorcism. There was a lot of discomfort surrounding the edit, mainly between Bava himself and the film’s producer, Alfredo Leone.

Elke: Alfredo Leone, yeah. Yeah I know and I think Bava was right because Alfredo wanted to add the scene with the throwing up and the exorcist stunt and the priest coming in an all that, which was a lot of bullshit I thought. I think the original form was much better and was more Bava, and Bava was very much opposed to that, but I guess Leone got his way.

MP: So you would’ve been against the edit? You thought Bava was right.

Elke: I would’ve been against the edit, yeah. It was just redundant; it was a lot of overkill.

MP: You also worked with Peter Sellers on a few occasions, most notably in 1964’s A Shot in the Dark. Sellers plays the incompetent Inspector Clouseau and people still marvel at his comedic abilities today. What was he like off-camera? Was his personality anything like the characters he played?

Elke: No. First of all, let me say that I believe that in the last century, barring none, he was the very, very, very best and the most talented. He had the most incredible timing. We got along fabulously well, really fabulously well. There were a couple of run-ins he had with the late Blake Edwards, Peter had, because he had a very strong sense of how good he was, he knew how good he was. Other actors still doubt themselves; he was not that way but he was awesome to work with. He was, off camera, a lonely, sad, incredibly lost man who was looking for a companion, a wife, a good woman. As a matter of fact, we never even so much as kissed, never. I remember my mom was with me in London; he invited us out for the weekend. He sent Vic, my driver, to pick me up. He lived in a big house with tiny little doors; it was built in the 1600s, you know, they had those small doors. He had prepared a lunch and then we went horseback riding and mom stayed home. Then he asked whether I wanted to marry him. I said “Peter, I can’t marry you. I don’t love you. I like you a lot and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you, but I have no such feelings for you whatsoever. He was desperate at that time to get married. Then he said “Well you’re going to stay for dinner?” I said, “No Peter.” My then-fiancé Joe Hyams, the journalist, was coming to London. I said, “Peter I’ve got to go home, Joe’s coming into town.” And he was so sad, he stood there and waved goodbye, it was a long little narrow road and his figure became smaller and smaller and smaller. It just broke my heart. He was together with an actress he did a movie with, who promised to leave her very powerful producer husband for him and he believed it and got a divorce. Then of course when they picture was over, the affair was over, and I think it broke his heart. It just broke his heart. Then he was extremely superstitious so he had this Woodruff, I think, as his psychic or something, and that’s how he met Britt Ekland. Woodruff said to him – it was pretty much toward the end of our shooting in Pinewood Studios – he said “B.E., B.E., B.E.” I don’t know whether it was arranged by Ekland and Woodruff. She was at the Dorchester Hotel and he was staying where we were shooting at the Dorchester Hotel as well. So that’s how he met her. I’m still convinced today, had he met a decent woman, one who cooks and takes care of him and gives him love and what he deserved, what any man deserves if it’s a good man, he would still be alive today. I’m convinced of that, I really am.

MP: As a spinoff of the last question – A Shot in the Dark also featured a couple of veteran actors, George Sanders and Herbert Lom.

Elke: Yeah, Herbert Lom, yeah (laughs). Herbert Lom was incredibly funny, totally talented, and totally great.

MP: Anybody who’s read about Herbert Lom or George Sanders, particularly George Sanders, knows that he often seemed depressed, and Herbert Lom seemed almost the complete opposite. Were the differences in their personas obvious while working on the film?

Elke: I had very little contact with George Sanders. Something didn’t gel. You know when you people and you say “Oh gee, I want to spend some time with this one” or “I’d rather not spend some time” – with George there was no attraction; I don’t mean physical attraction, I mean mental attraction. There was none. He was, I remember, very quiet, sticking to himself. Lom was very outgoing and fun, great fun and very bright. You could really have fantastic conversations with him about God and the world. It was just wonderful.

MP: And he’s still going today, he’s still going strong.

Elke: Good, I’m so happy! He should!

MP: The Oscar, released in 1966, is like a melting pot of so many talented people Not only does the film include people like Joseph Cotton, Milton Berle, Ernest Borgnine, and Edie Adams, but also a ton of cameos – costume designer Edith Head being one of them. The film seems to have gotten mixed opinions, not only from critics but from its stars. In fact, Tony Bennett noted that making the film was a terrible experience.

Elke: Oh he’s so full of shit! It wasn’t a terrible experience! I taught him to paint, you know, on the set. He never had taken a paint brush. He said “Oh you’re such a good painter, can you teach me?” I said, “Honey I can teach you my style, which is very distinct, but you’ll have to find your own.” No he had a great time! It was just he was very insecure because I think it was his first part in a movie altogether. And when you’re so good and so fantastic as a singer, I guess he was afraid to fail or to be not recognized or not to be good. We all have these fears – not to be able to come up to standard or what is expected of you. But he certainly didn’t give the impression of having a tough time at all.

MP: Is that right?

Elke: Yeah! I never saw it. Yeah sure I saw insecurity at times, which is a normal thing to have and I think if somebody is always terribly secure, that’s not a good thing either. It’s like going on stage every night; you have a little bit of the shakes, you know, until you’re there and then it’s yours. But no I didn’t feel that at all; I felt he had a great experience and was happy he could act in the movie. I personally felt the movie was not bad. Did you see it?

MP: Yeah I have seen it.

Elke: Did you think it was a shitty movie?

MP: No, I didn’t think so at all! In fact, I think about a year ago, I had the chance to talk to Ernest Borgnine. He didn’t mention The Oscar but I got the impression from everything that he’s done that he’s pretty much had a good time on all the movies he’s made.

Elke: Yeah. Again I’ve been so lucky to work with so many legends, so many highly- respected, wonderful people. I was never in awe; I was in awe when I heard I was going to work with Paul Newman, sure, a little girl from the country growing up very poorly. I liked Marilyn Monroe who I would have loved to have met, but it was too late. She had something about her which I really liked a lot, even though I didn’t like painted ladies as they say, you know, with the red fingernails and dyed hair, but I liked her a lot. Ernie was full of pep always; Eddie G. Robinson was full of pep. They were both great, very good in their jobs, very secure and very kind.

MP: I saw a documentary on Eddie G. some years ago and I remembered something specific they said - that he never messed up any of his lines.

Elke: No but you’re not supposed to, because at the time it was very, very expensive to make a movie. Today you can try a scene ten different ways and it doesn’t cost you, besides the crew of course. The last picture, the one I just finished in Europe, we had a director who tried to explore different aspects. I was playing his mother and it was kind of semi-autobiographic. So working with me, I guess he realized he didn’t even know what his connection to his mother was – whether I should portray her whiny or very tough or very sweet, or like a good old Yiddish yenta, you know? He didn’t know so he tried it out; he sat in front of his little box there and watched. He said, “No, maybe I’d like it that way, or that way.” That’s different nowadays because it doesn’t cost any money. Back then, if you had three takes, you felt terrible if you blew them, if you were the reason. So we were always very good with our lines. When I had scenes by myself, they used to call me “One Take Elke”; because we rehearsed. You rehearsed with the director and you got it down. With Peter Sellers, we improvised a lot because we got along very well; we had the same sense of humor.

MP: So it came naturally?

Elke: Yeah it came absolutely naturally. But to blow lines at that time – it was unheard of; really, it was something to be really ashamed of! Of course then you got nightmares which followed you your whole life until the day you’re on stage – mostly on stage, never in the movies. I had recurring nightmares that I have no idea what the next line is. So you wake up full of sweat and think “Oh my God I don’t know my lines!” You run off stage and go to the prop table and look at your script and it’s too dark, you can’t see, and then you have to improvise. But that’s a nightmare which you’ll have until the day you die.

MP: You mentioned a little bit earlier your appearance in Wrecking Crew with Dean Martin. The film also starred Sharon Tate, who was unfortunately murdered shortly after the release. I know Sharon’s death greatly affected Dean Martin, so much in fact that he never played Matt Helm again. What are your memories of Sharon and how did the news of her death affect you?

Elke: Well that’s a difficult and rather lengthy answer. I can’t go into every detail because it’s too humiliating, even post mortem. I became very good friends with Sharon. I like women generally. Sometimes they don’t like you, but I get along very well with women, and we became really very good friends. I’ll never forget, she came to my trailer one day and said “You’ve got to hear this. I know you love music and I have this tape here of Leonard Cohen.” She gave me a tape – at the time we didn’t have discs yet – of Leonard Cohen, which I of course played when I got home and fell totally in love with, like with Suzanne and The Sisters of Mercy. She introduced me to him; if it wasn’t for her I probably would’ve not met Leonard Cohen for a long time until afterwards. But she was very, very abused by her husband. She came to me for advice. She said, “You’re such a good woman. Can you help me? What would you do if ‘that and that’ happened?” I said, “Sharon, I can’t imagine that happening to me. I’m sorry! I’m not better than you; it’s just different. I can’t imagine! If that would happen to me, I’d brain him! I don’t know what I would do!” It was on numerous occasions, at least. Then she came to the house in the evenings, I’d cooked something when he [Sharon’s husband] was out of town, and she was full of life and bubbly and we laughed at listened to Leonard Cohen and sang with it, you know. I liked to sing harmony and she admired that. She said “How can you sing harmony?” I said “Well Leonard Cohen is the easiest one to sing harmony with.” She was happy to be here with me. But always, these questions came up again - “What should I do? Do you think I should leave?” I said “Sharon, if you love him you can’t leave. But you certainly can’t subject yourself to being treated in such a horrendous [way].” Not physically mind you, mentally, verbally, in a horrible, horrible way. Then when he came back from work - I don’t know where he was, doing something out of the country – we invited him here as well. And this bubbly, sweet, little Sharon became a wide-eyed, staring-at-him, silent person. And he was charming, mind you, really, great charm and a great presence for such a little sucker! So her death of course moved me, I can’t even describe it, especially because of how she lost her life. But I was told – I don’t know whether it’s the truth or not – that Polanski had been to Manson’s ranch and knew some of the people involved. Now I don’t know whether that’s true or not; it’s just I’ve been told that and it could very well be the truth. I don’t know; it’s just hearsay.

MP: Who did you consider your closest friends among the other actors and actresses you worked with?

Elke: Strangely enough – on stage is a different thing because you’re together every single night. I had a lot of friends when I did a lot of work in Drury Lane and went on tour, and of course the people become your friends, your co-actors and actresses. In movies, my friends were never actors. As close as I came to really having a friend in the motion picture business was Sharon. The others were wonderful – and Paul Newman, every time he came into town, he stayed at my husband’s hotel. My husband is General Manager and was pretty much his whole life. So we always talked. If he couldn’t come by, we talked on the phone. It was friendly but not “friend friend”, you know. I did my job and went home. And besides Sharon, there wasn’t really anybody who I, let’s say, befriended. Most of my friends were musicians or just normal, simple people, or sports people or my good friends, or people who work with animals, or other people not from the business. The same thing also goes for producers or directors. I did my work and then I had a different life.

MP: Were there any specific roles you wanted to play, or were there any scripts you turned down because you felt they wouldn’t be right for you?

Elke: No I should’ve turned a couple of them down in retrospect (laughs)! I should have turned down a few in retrospect. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess it’s like a hamster in a wheel, you know, you go on and on and on, and say “Oh a hooker! I’ve never played a hooker before!” So I’d play a hooker. Of then, “Oh I have never played a nun before. Okay I’ll play a nun.”

MP: As a side note of interest, I read online that you lived in a house during the 1960s that you believed was haunted.

Elke: I not only believe it, I know it. You don’t know me, you just know me from the movies but I’m with both feet on the ground and love my garden. I have an acre and a half property here which I do all myself and always have been an outdoor human being, you know, barefoot and going around with the garden shears and raising puppies or doing stuff like that. So if somebody would have told me that story, I would’ve not believed it, really. I would have not believed it, but I lived it! My ex-husband Joe Hyams, he wrote the whole story. It’s so unbelievable and it’s so long, but every word he wrote was absolutely, 100% true, and I lived it all! So if somebody says there’s an entity in this house or something, I believe it, I absolutely 100% believe it. It’s ridiculous but it happened to me! Then, they took some pictures, the insurance company, of the burned up stuff, and it all happened always in the dining room of the house. I don’t have the same house anymore. This house is free and clean; I have never even noticed anything. But even my dogs at the old house followed somebody and their hair would stand up on the back of their spine. It was unbelievable, really.

MP: I used to watch Hollywood Squares all the time and I know you’d done that show a number of times. Can you share any interesting stories from appearing on the show or about the regulars like Paul Lynde and Karen Valentine?

Elke: No, not really. Again it was a job. They said it was good publicity. You know, sometimes you can be funny if you’re quick-witted; if not, they write you little things. I liked Paul Lynde very much because he was so outrageous. I liked to watch him and he made me laugh. But there aren’t any positive memories – not negative memories either - but no positive ones.

MP: You also do a lot of painting. Is there anything that influences the type of things you paint or how you paint them?

Elke: Well I started painting when I was a kid. Then I had the great, good fortune in the school I went to, which I mentioned before, we had a fantastic art teacher, an old man who took me under his wing because he saw my love for what he did and my love for art. He did not teach me the style I have and have become well-known with – that was a man when I first came to this country, to Los Angeles - his name was Amendeo Mendicci and he signed his works with “Amen” like in church. He had this technique which I had to reverse because it didn’t work for me. My paintings all had this leaded glass effect, like a church window effect, which has to do with acrylic and blackwash. Acrylic will take black water color; oil would not, oil would repell it. So he would blacken his canvas first, the white canvas with black water color, and then put acrylic on top of that and get this shaded gray effect. I tried it; it didn’t work for me so I reversed it. I put on the acrylic first, sketched first - it’s a lot of work, it’s like a five ton process. So I sketched first then I mixed all my own colors. I never take the color directly out of the tube. I don’t know why but it did me good so far because everybody raves about the color combinations and how brilliant the colors are. So I learned from him; he allowed me to be there when he painted, I painted with him for a while. He was quite an old gentleman already. Then he passed away and I continued. I’m a believer – I don’t go to church every Sunday but if I go in the woods and look for mushrooms and hear the birds sing and see the beautiful flowers and trees and grass – that’s more church than any church could ever be. Also my dad having been a Lutheran minister - who never forced me into church – he said “Want to come with me? I’m preaching today.” I said “Okay” because what I liked what he said and I understood it, which was more to the point as a kid. So my very early works were very sad, like kids behind barbed wire with starving little faces and thin little hands, dirty little fingernails. Everything always had a church in it or something, and mostly monochrome. I did not, at the beginning, dare to use a lot of color or I didn’t want to. Then one day I sat in the garden – I have a very secluded garden here and I always painted in the nude – I’m sitting out there and it was spring, and the Ranunculus and the Anemones came out. There was a pink one next to a fuchsia one next to a light purple, a yellow one, and I thought “Look at that! Geez!” The painting, which I intended to do pretty much monochromatic, became a burst of color. Since that time, I’m not afraid anymore. I’m just not afraid because every color kind of goes together – not in clothing, in clothing it’s horrible – but in a painting it’s great. I wouldn’t now put a brown next to an orange but I use fifty million shades of green, fifty million different shades of orange, and it works! It’s like in a house, you have some antiques; and if it’s a beautiful piece, then it matches. Everything doesn’t have to match like when people decorate your home – no, if the piece is beautiful, it can be from the 1700s or it can be a very modern thing. The piece is great and everything works together, and I’d rather have a mishmash of colors and different pieces and interesting things than having everything standing like little soldiers and matching.

MP: In the mid-1980s, you had an instructional book on painting which accompanied a television series called Painting with Elke. Do you have any plans to write an autobiography?

Elke: No because I’m the worst writer in the whole wide world! I bore myself to death. I could not imagine talking about myself for more than an hour. I’m not very impressed with myself; I mean, I like myself, I think I’m great, but I’m not one who – when you come to the house I have a couple of wedding pictures standing around, but other than that there’s no shrine to “the actress” or “Elke” at all. I’m lousy in writing. I can paint what I want to say much better than I could write it. I can say it okay, I can speak it okay, I can feel it okay but I can’t write worth a damn, unfortunately. But then on the other hand, you can’t do everything!

MP: You do have an official website, Elke Sommer Online. For those who haven’t visited it, can you explain what they’ll find when they log on?

Elke: No but maybe you can because I haven’t looked at it yet (laughs).

MP: You’ve never seen it?

Elke: I’ve seen pieces of it. I have never seen a movie I did unless I had to dub it. I never go because if I don’t like what I did, I’m so sensitive that way, I would think about it my whole life – if I was bad or if I could have done something better, which happens all the time of course. No but the website – my husband is familiar with it. My girlfriend, who is a very, very good German writer and author, she put the website together for me. My husband was very helpful digging old things up and adding things with the music or paintings and the pictures and all that. But I hear it’s very, very good.

MP: Oh there’s a ton of information on there.

Elke: Yeah, it’s been a long life. Jesus, it’s been a long, long life; I’ve really done a lot in my life. And sometimes when I’m there and I want to watch ‘The Price Is Right’ on television, I feel guilty that I’m not out doing something productive (laughs). Then I thought, my whole life I’ve worked, I’ve done something productive at every moment in time. So now I can take it easy and watch ‘The Price Is Right’ and ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’’

MP: I love ‘The Price Is Right’!

Elke: I love ‘The Price Is Right’ and I love ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’

MP: That’s good too!

Elke: Yeah, you learn a lot!

MP: I learn a lot from Jeopardy too.

Elke: Jeopardy is amazing. What surprises me about Jeopardy is, first off, the knowledge, but also the speed with which the contestants have to answer. You know, if you think a little bit about it, okay, two or three seconds, the answer will come to you or not. But it’s a very classy show, Jeopardy is.

MP: Once again, I’ve been speaking to Elke Sommer, the star of such films as A Shot in the Dark, The Oscar, and Lisa and the Devil. Elke, I’d like to thank you again for your time today. I hope we have the chance to speak again sometime and please keep me updated on your current and future projects.

Elke: I sure will. I certainly will, and thank you!

I'd like to offer my sincere appreciation to Elke Sommer for taking the time to do this interview.

© 2009 Gary Sweeney