The Rhonda Fleming Story

By Darlene Cah

Key Takeaways

• A Hollywood talent scout signed Fleming to a large contract—without a screen test—while she was still in high school.
• Fleming wasn’t interested in movies; she wanted to be a singer.
• She is known for her exceptional beauty, red hair and blue eyes.

From High School to Hollywood Ingenue

Rhonda Fleming was born Marilyn Louis on Aug. 10, 1923, in Hollywood. That alone might be enough to set a girl’s sights on becoming a movie star. But young Marilyn had an extra dose of star power in her DNA. Her mother, Effie Graham, was a renowned model and actress who had appeared with Al Jolson on Broadway.

But acting was not one of Marilyn’s goals. She wanted to be a singer. She studied light opera, took voice lessons from her aunt, and entered singing contests. Her ambitions took a radical shift when Henry Wilson, a well-known talent agent for producer David O. Selznick, caught a glimpse of her outside of Beverly Hills High School, where she was still a student. He changed her life.

In a 1989 interview with the Orange County Register, the then semi-retired star stated, "It's so weird ... [Wilson] stopped me crossing the street. It kinda scared me a little bit—I was only 16 or 17. He signed me to a seven-year contract without a screen test. It was a Cinderella story…"

The budding ingenue played a few bit parts in features. Then, Selznick cast her as a violent, seductive, institutionalized mental patient in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

Selznick changed Marilyn’s name to Rhonda Fleming, and a new Hollywood star was born.

Fleming recalled, “When I got the part, I ran home and told my mother I was going to play a nymphomaniac. ‘A what!’ my mother cried. I had no idea what the word meant!”

The film was a box office hit and garnered six Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Original Score.

Another Queen of Technicolor is Crowned

Like her contemporary, Marueen O’Hara, Rhonda Fleming, another stunning red-haired beauty, was declared the Queen of Technicolor, and the fans adored her—whether she played a film noir femme fatale, or a hardened Wild West woman with a heart of gold.

In the years following Spellbound, Fleming made more than 40 movies, starred opposite some of Hollywood’s most famous leading men and women, and appeared in a variety of television shows, including Wagon Train and The Virginian.

Some of Fleming’s Westerns include:

• Cavalry Charge (previously released as The Last Outpost) with Ronald Reagan
• The Eagle and the Hawk with John Payne
• Pony Express with Charlton Heston and Forrest Tucker
• Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas
• Bullwhip with Guy Madison
• Gun Glory with Stewart Granger and Chill Wills

Other notable films include:

• Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer
• The Spiral Staircase with George Brent, Dorothy McGuire and Elsa Lancaster
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Bing Crosby
• While the City Sleeps with Dana Andrews and George Sanders
• Home Before Dark with Jean Simmons and Ephrem Zimbalist, Jr.

The Singer Takes the Stage

Though Fleming sang a bit in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949) with Bing Crosby, her music career was largely set aside as her fame increased as an actress. But Fleming kept up her voice lessons, and in 1952, she sang live on The Colgate Comedy Hour. Five years later, she debuted her nightclub show to rave reviews and enthusiastic audiences at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. "I just wanted to know if I could get out on that stage—if I could do it. And I did!” she said.

In 1958, she recorded Rhonda, an album of contemporary songs and standards, for Columbia Records.

Other musical performances included a concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs at the Hollywood Bowl and a 10-week tour performing George Gershwin classics with Skitch Henderson.

As if concert tours and dazzling Vegas shows weren’t enough, in 1973, Fleming made her Broadway debut in a revival of the 1936 comedy, The Women by Clare Boothe Luce.

‘Retirement’ Career

By the late 1970s, Fleming mostly retired from acting and devoted herself to philanthropy, using her fame to support a variety of causes. She volunteered at UCLA and opened her home and pool to children with cerebral palsy. When her beloved sister Beverly fought and lost her battle with ovarian cancer, Fleming was struck by the lack of emotional and psychological support available to patients at that time. So, she and her then-husband, Ted Mann, opened the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center, in addition to another UCLA facility dedicated to aiding women fighting cancer. She also worked with the homeless and established a center to help single women with children find temporary housing.

Life Out of the Spotlight

Rhonda Fleming was married six times and had one son, actor Kent Lane, in 1941.

Fleming died Oct. 14, 2020, at age 97.