Two singer-dancers who worked with Sinatra and Belafonte die at 89

They performed together with Frank Sinatra. With Harry Belafonte. With Fred Astaire. And on Monday, German Kessler’s twin children – Alice and Ellen – ended their lives together at the age of 89.

Police confirmed the death to The Associated Press, saying in an email that it was a “complicated suicide.” The couple shared a house in the town of Grünewald, south of Munich.

The sisters, who were born on Aug. 20, 1936, in the city of Neuchau, “did not want to live anymore” and “ended their lives together,” German news agency Bild reported Monday, according to an automatic translation. Medically assisted dying is allowed under certain circumstances in Germany, the media said, for people who are legally competent and act voluntarily.

AP said the women were inseparable in life and death, learning to dance as children and practicing their skills with the Leipzig Opera Children’s Ballet. In 1952, after World War II ended and the family found themselves living in the newly formed German Democratic Republic, East Germany, they all fled to West Germany.

The tall double — reportedly 5 feet 10 — was discovered three years later while dancing in Düsseldorf in 1955 by the director of the Lido Cabaret in Paris, according to German news agency DPA International. It launched an international career for Kessler, who has been to Rome, toured the world and performed with luminaries, DPA said.

They turned down an offer to appear in “Viva Las Vegas” with Elvis Presley, the AP said, not wanting to be pigeonholed into American music movies. But according to IMDb, they had a good career in film and television, mostly involving Italian and German projects. They sang on “The Ed Sullivan Show” three times in the early 1960s and on “The Red Skelton Show” in 1963.

The Kesslers did well into their 80s, at one point telling DPA, “Being on the road as a couple only has its advantages. You’re stronger together.”

The women told Bild in 2024 that they had “admission conditions [their] Willing that they wanted to be buried in a cemetery next to their mother and dog, they never married.

On Monday, Radio Monte Carlo paid tribute to Ellen and Alice Kessler on social media.

“Alice and Alan Kessler left together, as they lived: inseparable,” the radio station, which broadcasts from Monaco and Milan, said in Italy on Instagram. “Born in 1936, they were an absolute symbol of the European spectacle, including music, dance and television. In Italy, they became famous as the symbol of the “foot of the nation”.[s] Beauty and stage presence for over fifty years.

“A unique artistic duo, capable of leaving an indelible mark on the collective imagination.”