Dubbed the "Queen of Technicolor" because of her creamy complexion, blue eyes and flaming red hair, Rhonda Fleming was a glamorous and popular leading lady in films of the 1940s and '50s. She was also active in television and continued her career through 1990 as an actress and singer.
Fleming usually played self-assured women who knew what they wanted and had no qualms about going after it. Her leading men included Gregory Peck, Randolph Scott, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson, Stewart Granger, Ronald Reagan and John Payne. With the latter two, she made four films each. Most of her starring vehicles were somewhat routine, and she once remarked that her only regret was "I didn't get to make a truly great movie like Casablanca to be identified with."
Fleming was born Marilyn Louis in Hollywood, CA, on August 10, 1923. Her father was an insurance salesman and her mother, Effie Graham, was a model and performer who had worked with Al Jolson in New York City. Fleming was discovered on the street by agent Henry Willson and signed a contract with him while she was still attending Beverly Hills High School. She made her film debut at Republic Pictures as a dance-hall girl in In Old Oklahoma (1943), a John Wayne Western.
When Willson signed with David O. Selznick, Fleming went along and had supporting roles in a few Selznick films, including a choice small part in the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller Spellbound (1945). Of this big break Fleming later said, "I was cast in the role of a nymphomaniac in a mental institution and Ingrid Bergman was my doctor. When I told my mother, a devout Mormon, the character I would be playing, we had to look up the word in the dictionary, having no idea what a nymphomaniac was." Fleming's performance was convincing enough for her to be cast the following year in Robert Siodmak's thriller, The Spiral Staircase (1945), with George Brent and Dorothy McGuire. In 1947, Selznick lent her to RKO for the second lead as a scheming secretary in the classic film noir Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum.
With her distinctive hair, Fleming was made for color films and it wasn't long before she became a leading lady. Her first starring role was in a low-budget Cinecolor film Adventure Island (1947) with Rory Calhoun, and in 1949, she worked with two of the biggest stars in Hollywood, as Bob Hope's leading lady in The Great Lover, and as Bing Crosby's love interest in the musical adaptation of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Of working with Hope and Crosby, Fleming recalled how they both teased her, "I used to freeze up when anyone kidded me. You couldn't go on that way working with those two. [...] Bing is always casual, always kidding, and ad-libbing while he's working; Bob is more serious. Bing is more sophisticated; Bob is more like a little boy. After he finishes a scene, he sometimes goes and sits in a corner by himself. Both use their eyes a great deal. Bing is always the singer and sort of romantic; Bob uses his eyes for comedy." Working with Crosby allowed Fleming to show off her singing voice, and she and Crosby later recorded their musical numbers in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for the soundtrack album on Decca Records. She later sang on television and on the stage, both on Broadway and in Las Vegas (where she helped to inaugurate the Tropicana Hotel).
Being an actress was not without its hazards for Fleming. While filming a scene in Cry Danger, Fleming had an attack of appendicitis. Despite Powell's protests against her leaving in the middle of a scene, Fleming called her mother to drive her to the hospital, where she had emergency surgery. The following year, during shooting of The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951), Fleming was required to ride a horse to the top of a hill and rear up. "I reared the horse up and it fell back on top of me. By the Grace of God, I was not squashed like a bug. I was knocked unconscious. How I got up and walked away and finished that film was a miracle. [...]I spent the rest of my life going to chiropractors."
Director Fritz Lang cast Fleming in the noir thriller While the City Sleeps (1956) as Vincent Price's cheating wife, but as Westerns were popular in the 1950s, Fleming was put into several in the genre, including Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, and Gun Glory, also 1957. Though a leading lady, Fleming once confessed, "I would have been happy staying in character parts for the rest of my career. When I did those, I never had to care where the camera was. I just concentrated on my lines and my work."
Fleming also appeared in television, beginning in 1955 with a live version of the Katharine Hepburn film Stage Door for the Best of Broadway program. Other shows included Death Valley Days, Wagon Train, Burke's Law, McMillan & Wife, Police Woman and Kung Fu. In 1966, after marrying producer Hall Bartlett, Fleming retired from acting, but returned to it after her 1972 divorce. At the time, she spoke about Hollywood's notoriously short memory, "I had to start all over from scratch. There were new heads of studios, and the fact that I'd done 36 feature films meant nothing to them." Instead, Fleming went to Broadway in a revival of Clare Boothe Luce's The Women.
While Fleming could have rested on her laurels when her acting career ended, she turned her attention to charity work. Having watched her sister Beverly suffer from ovarian cancer and witnessing firsthand the lack of emotional support given patients through their ordeal, Fleming and her husband, theater owner Ted Mann, started The Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at the UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, California in 1991. Among the many charities Fleming was associated with were Childhelp USA, The Achievement Rewards for College Scientists, the French Foundation for Alzheimer's Research (of which she was a founding member), the Los Angeles Music Center, The Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children, The Revlon/UCLA Women's Health Research Program, and The Jerusalem Film Institute in Israel.
Fleming had six husbands including Ted Mann (1978 to his death in 2001) and Darol Wayne Carlson (2003 to his death in 2017). By her first husband, Thomas Wade Lane Jr., she had a son, Kent Lane, who became an actor.
Rhonda Fleming passed away in Santa Monica, CA on October 14, 2020 at the age of 97.
by Roger Fristoe and Lorraine LoBianco
