Rhonda Fleming

Career

Fleming was born as Marilyn Louis on August 10, 1923 in Hollywood, California, to Harold Cheverton Louis, an non-professional insurance salesman, and Effie Graham, who was a famous model and actress, who appeared opposite Al Jolson at New York's Winter Garden Theater, in the musical Dancing Around, from 1914 to 1915. Her grandfather was John C. Graham, a prominent actor, theater owner and newspaper editor in Utah. She began working as a film actress while attending Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1941. She was discovered by the well-known Hollywood agent Henry Willson. After appearing uncredited in several films, she received her first substantial role in the thriller Spellbound (1945), produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She followed this with supporting roles in another thriller, The Spiral Staircase (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak, the Randolph Scott western Abilene Town (1946), and the film noir classic Out of the Past (1947) with Robert Mitchum. Her first leading role came in Adventure Island (1947), a low-budget action film made in the two-color Cinecolor process and co-starring Rory Calhoun.

She co-starred with Bing Crosby in her first Technicolor film, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), a musical loosely based on the story by Mark Twain. Fleming exhibited her singing ability, dueting with Crosby on “Once and For Always” and soloing with “When Is Sometime”. She and Crosby recorded the songs for a three-disc, 78 rpm Decca album, conducted by Victor Young, also of the film. She sang on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour during the same live telecast that featured Errol Flynn, on September 30, 1951, from the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.

In 1953, Fleming portrayed Cleopatra in Serpent of the Nile. That same year she appeared in two films shot in 3-D, Inferno with Robert Ryan and the musical Those Redheads From Seattle with Gene Barry. The following year she starred with Fernando Lamas in Jivaro, her third 3-D release. Much of the outdoor location work for Fleming's appearance in the 1955 Western Tennessee's Partner, in which she played Duchess opposite John Payne as Tennessee and Ronald Reagan as Cowpoke, was filmed at the storied Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California, known as the most heavily filmed outdoor location in the history of the movies and television. She was filmed riding a horse over the movie ranch's rocky terrain, and one of those rocks, a distinctive monolithic sandstone feature behind which Fleming, as Duchess, hid during an action sequence, later became known as Rhonda Fleming Rock. The rock remains in place today and is part of a section of the former movie ranch known as Garden of the Gods, which has been preserved as public parkland.

Tennessee's Partner was one of several movies Fleming made as Ronald Reagan's co-star, including Tropic Zone, The Last Outpost and Hong Kong.

Among Fleming’s subsequent cinematic credits are Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956), co-starring Dana Andrews; Allan Dwan's Slightly Scarlet (1956), co-starring John Payne and Arlene Dahl; John Sturges’s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) co-starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas; and the Irwin Allen/Joseph M. Newman production of The Big Circus (1959), co-starring Victor Mature and Vincent Price. Her most recent film was Waiting for the Wind (1990).

During the 1950s and into the 1960s, Fleming frequently appeared on television with guest-starring roles on The Red Skelton Show, The Best of Broadway, The Investigators, Shower of Stars, The Dick Powell Show, Death Valley Days, Wagon Train, Burke's Law, The Virginian, McMillan & Wife, Police Woman, Kung Fu, Ellery Queen, and The Love Boat. On March 4, 1962, Fleming appeared in one of the last segments of ABC's Follow the Sun in a role opposite Gary Lockwood, who was nearly 14 years her junior. She played a Marine in the episode "Marine of the Month".

In 1958, Fleming again displayed her singing talent when she recorded her only LP, entitled simply Rhonda (reissued in 2008 on CD as Rhonda Fleming Sings Just For You). In this album, which was released by Columbia Records, she blended then current songs like "Around The World" with standards such as "Love Me Or Leave Me" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". Conductor-arranger Frank Comstock provided the musical direction. One of her final film appearances to date was a bit-role in the 1980 comedy The Nude Bomb (starring Don Adams) as Edith von Secondburg.

Fleming has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2007, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her.

Personal life

Fleming has worked for several charities, especially in the field of cancer care, and has served on the committees of many related organizations. In 1991, she and her fifth husband, Ted Mann, established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic For Women's Comprehensive Care at the UCLA Medical Center.

In 1964, Fleming spoke at the "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley, a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court which struck down the practice as in conflict with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Joining Fleming and Eisley at the rally were Walter Brennan, Lloyd Nolan, Dale Evans, Pat Boone, and Gloria Swanson. Fleming declared, "Project Prayer is hoping to clarify the First Amendment to the Constitution and reverse this present trend away from God." Eisley and Fleming added that John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Roy Rogers, Mary Pickford, Jane Russell, Ginger Rogers, and Pat Buttram would also have attended the rally had their schedules not been in conflict.

Fleming has been married six times:

From her son Kent Lane (b. 1941), Rhonda also has two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly) and four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane and Cole).

Television