Alice & Ellen Kessler

Biography

Alic & Ellen Kessler are German twin singers. The girls first performed in the children’s ballet of the Leipzig Opera. In 1952 they used a visitor’s visa to escape from the GDR to the Federal Republic. In the revue theater Palladium in Düsseldorf, the twins received their first engagement as dancers. There they were discovered in 1955 by the director of the Parisian Lido, Pierre Louis Guerin, who committed them to his world-famous variété on the Champs-Elysées. The film career of the Kessler twins also began in 1955. They performed in a lot of films, not only in Germany but also in France and Italy. In the late 1950s, the record industry began to interest the twins. They got a contract with Telefunken in 1959. That was the year they represented Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Heute Abend woll’n wir tanzen geh’n”. They released a couple of records but did not get any hits as a duo. However, they formed a trio with Peter Kraus, Alice, Ellen & Peter, and had some hits as such. In Italy they were especially successful with their song “Da-da-um-pa”. The Italian-language version became the theme tune of the RAI television series “Studio Uno”. After 1963 the sisters ended their record career in Germany, but continued in Italy until the 1980s.
At the age of 40, the twins were scanned for the Italian edition of Playboy. The issue was sold out within a very short time. In Italy, where they had their permanent residence from 1962 to 1986, Alice and Ellen Kessler (“Le gemelle Kessler”) were long considered icons of television. The Kessler twins were also in demand in the USA. Many well-known Hollywood personalities liked to be seen with the “German girls”, among others Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster or Elvis Presley. Their birthplace Nerchau honored them on the occasion of their 70th birthday in 2006 with the honorary citizenship.