Alice and Ellen Kessler (born 20 August 1936 in Nerchau, Germany) are twins popular in Europe, especially Germany and Italy, from the 1950s and 1960s and until today for their singing, dancing and acting. They are usually credited as the Kessler Twins (Die Kessler-Zwillinge in Germany and Le Gemelle Kessler in Italy), and remain popular today.
In the USA, they were not as popular but appeared in the 1963 film Sodom and Gomorrah as dancers and appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in that year.
Their parents, Paul and Elsa, sent them to ballet classes at the age of six, and they joined the Leipzig Opera's child ballet program at age 11. When they were 18, their parents used a visitor's visa to escape to West Germany, where they performed at the Palladium in Düsseldorf. They performed at The Lido in Paris between 1955 and 1960, and represented West Germany in the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in 8th place with Heute Abend wollen wir tanzen geh'n (Tonight we want to go dancing).
They moved to Italy in 1960 and gradually moved to more serious roles. At the age of 40, they agreed to pose on the cover of the Italian edition of Playboy. That issue became the fastest-selling Italian Playboy up until that point.
They moved back to Germany in 1986 and currently live in Munich. They have received numerous awards from both the German and Italian governments for promoting German-Italian cooperation through their work in show business.
Famous quotes containing the word twins:
“If twins are believed to be less intelligent as a class than single-born children, it is not surprising that many times they are also seen as ripe for social and academic problems in school. No one knows the extent to which these kind of attitudes affect the behavior of multiples in school, and virtually nothing is known from a research point of view about social behavior of twins over the age of six or seven, because this hasn’t been studied either.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)