With luxuriant auburn hair and a near-perfect face, Rhonda Fleming, nicknamed "The Queen of Technicolor", made her name in the 1940s and 1950s in films such as Spellbound (1945), Out of the Past (1947), Cry Danger (1951), and While the City Sleeps (1956). While she made a significant contribution to motion pictures, Fleming has made an even bigger contribution to many charitable causes, for which she continues to work tirelessly today.

Rhonda Fleming is a Hollywood hometown girl, having been born there as Marilyn Louis on August 10, 1923. While still a student at Beverly Hills High (where she was the captain of the girls' basketball team), she was spotted by agent Henry Willson (who discovered Rock Hudson among many others) on her way to school. "[H]is car circling around the block several times before he blocked my path, asking if I'd ever thought of being in movies. That was the beginning of my career, eventually meeting David O. Selznick and being cast in my first top featured role in the film Spellbound with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman." Her role in the Alfred Hitchcock mystery was a mystery to the actress. "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, she appeared as a scheming secretary with Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, which has become a film noir classic.

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 any one 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, in which she is on her knees in front of Dick Powell, 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 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. Although 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 has 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 is associated with are Childhelp USA, The Achievement Rewards for College Scientists, the French Foundation for Alzheimer's Research (of which she is 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.

When interviewed at the age of 80, Rhonda Fleming explained her life off the screen, "I'm not in show business anymore, so now I'm free to do what I want to do. My desire now is to use what name value I have to reach out and help those less fortunate." She certainly has done that.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Beck, Marilyn "Rhonda Fleming Now Advocates 'Simple Life'" The Milwaukee Journal 20 Mar 75
http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org Film Noir Foundation Interview with Rhonda Fleming April 2, 2010
Gardner, Gerald, and Bellow, Jim From Ben Bradlee to Lena Horne: Our Most Famous 80 Year Olds Reveal Why They Never Felt So Young
Hofsted, David Rhonda Fleming: The Redhead and the Cowboys
Jorgenen, Jay Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood's Greatest Costume Designer
"Rhonda Fleming: A Los Angeles Redhead in King Arthur's Court", Life 14 Mar 49
Monush, Barry Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors From the Silents to 1965 .
http://www.rhondafleming.com
Thomas, Bob "Rhonda Flemings Learns How to Work with Bing, Bob" The Desert News 15 Dec 48
Wilson, Earl "Ravishing Rhonda Fleming Walks Chalk on TV" The Milwaukee Sentinel 8 Apr 55