Alice Kessler

German twin sisters Alice and Ellen Kessler reached the peak of their popularity in the 1950s and 60s. Their parents, mechanical engineer Paul Kessler and his wife Elsa, encouraged their daughters' artistic inclinations from early childhood and enrolled them in ballet classes. By 1950, the sisters had graduated from opera school in Leipzig. Soon after, they took advantage of a visiting permit by defecting from their native Saxony in the GDR to West Germany. At the Düsseldorf Palladium, the duo made their professional debut as singer/dancers and began to be featured on screen in several German musicals and romances. In 1955, Alice and Ellen were recruited by the director of the Paris Lido, Pierre Louis-Guérin, to join his Bluebell Girls in Varieté on the Champs-Élysées. Blonde, unusually tall (at 1.78cm) and long-legged, the twins enjoyed great popularity during their five-year long tenure on the Parisian stage. In 1959, Alice and Ellen represented West Germany at The Eurovision Song C