Entertainment News

Elke Sommer dies at 85: the Pink Panther co-star remembered in London and Delhi

Elke Sommer, the German-born actress who starred opposite Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark and Paul Newman in The Prize, has died aged 85. The Guardian and Hindustan Times both cite the German outlet Bild.

The Guardian says Bild reported she died in Los Angeles of heart failure. Hindustan Times, running an Associated Press obituary, says she died at home in Bel Air on Wednesday, according to her stepson Sebastian Walther, and that Los Angeles police confirmed responding to the death of an 85-year-old woman on her street.

Born Elke Schletz in Berlin in 1940, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, she was spotted on a trip to Italy in 1958 and soon worked across Europe. The Prize won her a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer. Her other films included the 1970s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None and the British comedy Carry On Behind.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — her place in a wave of European performers who crossed over to Hollywood after the war, and how Hollywood “made much of her bombshell image”.
• Hindustan Times — the AP's American career story: the stars she worked with, from Bob Hope to Dean Martin and Sharon Tate, and her two marriages. Her second husband, hotelier Wolf Walther, died in July.

Where the accounts differ: the Guardian gives heart failure as the cause, citing Bild, and places her death in Los Angeles; the AP version in Hindustan Times is more precise on place, her home in Bel Air, and sources it to her stepson. The Guardian highlights her British comedy work; the AP version focuses on her 1960s Hollywood films.