Twins Alice and Ellen Kessler died together. German newspapers announced it Bild. According to judicial police sources reported by the newspaper, the German dancer, famous in Italy for the variety show Studio Uno and timeless songs Da-da-un-pathey died after a agreed assisted suicide. In April 2024 the Kessler family revealed themselves in an interview on Bild the desire to one day both be buried in the same urn. They want to resting with his mother’s ashes Elsa and their dog Yello. “That’s what we set out in our wishes”Ellen explained at that time.
Alice and Ellen were born on August 20, 1936 in Saxony, a state that became East Germany after 1945. But after a childhood spent learning to dance, at the age of eighteen they fled to the West on tourist visas, when the Wall was not yet there but it was not easy to escape from Russian territory. They arrived in Paris where they worked barefoot as dancers on the Lido, between 1955 and 1960, in the historic group Bluebelle Girls. 1955 was also the year of his film debut as the absolute protagonist in As Long as There Were Beautiful Girls, a German musical produced in a Munich studio. Many more musicals would follow, again German productions, based on traditional operettas, in which the two girls show a certain ease not only by dancing but also by always acting as a couple. In 1959 they participated in the Europa Song Contest with Tonight We Want to Go Dancing. However, the choice to accept a job on Italian TV was a happy one. In January ’61 and for about twenty weeks on Rai1 they were protagonists together with Ornella Vanoni, the Cetra Quartet and Henri Salvador of Antonello Falqui’s musical variety show, Giardino d’Inverno. Alice and Ellen opened the program wearing heavily censored black stockings performed the theme song entitled Pollo e Champagne, a catchy and cheerful song that recalls the performances of the great jazz orchestras of the fifties.
A few months later the Kesslers became star dancers of the groundbreaking Saturday night variety show hosted by Mina, Studio Uno, performing with all the beauty and harmony required by law in the first, second, and fourth seasons. Their current popularity, in a time of suppression of women’s physical appreciation, cannot encompass a slogan from the past: how tall are the Kesslers, but what matters most How long are their legs? Yes, because Alice and Ellen are quite tall (1.78), but it is their legs that stick out half the TV screen, measuring more than one meter. If you then add that at their side there is the choreographer and acrobatic dancer Don Lurio, who appears behind them, then the visual game is complete. The Kessler family became famous for at least some of their dancing and singing numbers. The first is Da-da-un-pa who they show dressed as Bluebell with black stockings, a lace bodice and feathers on the head. “Crossing all Illinois/Crossing Tennessee/Without stopping here/Da-da-un-pa has arrived”the twins sing while winking at one of them”internationality“professional, with basic choreography, back and forth accompanied by a few hand movements, but it became a musical jingle that would be sung throughout Italy for decades. The same goes for La notte è piccolo per noi, a song that opened Studio Uno in 1965.”Tonight is small for us, too small”Alice and Ellen sing, in a memorable swing, which they in black bodysuits and white feathers fall to the ground thinking of Marilyn and Jane Russell, making sparkling and sensual nightclub playB. Perhaps it was in this dance that the Kessler family performed this kind of mirror dance, where the two often looked at each other and showed the same steps or movements as if they were mirrors of each other. The success was extraordinary.
They will arrive in the coming years Good song And Millelucibut also participation in the Danny Kaye show in the United States. Many flirtations were associated with the twins who would always be single and inseparable: Alice with Enrico Maria Salerno and Marcel Amont; Ellen with Umberto Orsini and Burt Lancaster. Although a famous and unusual fan will knock on their door: Giulio Andreotti. “We had a long chat – Ellen recalled Ansa a few years ago – When saying goodbye, he said: come and visit me at Fiuggi. He explained to us that his wife would be there and would cook for us. We never left”. In 1975 Alice and Ellen posed at forty for an issue of Playboy, bringing newsstands to a standstill and confusing collectors. They turned down the lead role with Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas, after meeting him at the Europa Song Contest, they played themselves for Dino Risi on Thursday and with Alberto Sordi in complex I, but also in the theater for Garinei and Giovannini. In the eighties they retired from the real world and lived in a house in Munich in two adjacent apartments. After a long hiatus, in 2011, they returned to the theater stage with the show Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 2014 their last performance was at the Sanremo Festival where they sang Beautiful ones like us.
