Rhonda Fleming

Rhonda Fleming may not be remembered as one of the best actresses in history, but she certainly had her moment and she certainly made movies to remember. As if that were not enough, her hallmarks were very difficult to forget, with that cascading hair, pureblood red, so smooth and wavy, round face with a frank, wide smile and that look so clear, so blue. She was the ideal face to interpret sweet, friendly, sociable women, lovers and heroines of adventures and westerns, although she also knew how to embody sneaky redheads and difficult to handle more than once.

Born Marylin Louis, the actress was born in Hollywood, California, on August 10, 1923. She was the daughter of a model and actress from New York and studied in Beverly Hills. It seemed clear that his was going to be the interpretation and so it was. Although she debuted at age 20 with a small role as a ballerina in John Wayne ‘s western In Old Oklahoma , her first credited role came two years later in Remember , the Hitchcock fantasy starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman . . She was followed by The Spiral Staircase , a masterful film noir directed by Robert Siodmak. Her white face and her clear eyes shone with great intensity in those kinds of movies where the photographic treatment is so spatial. The same thing happened in Jacques Tourneur ‘s masterpiece Back in Time , where Rhonda played the sweet girlfriend of a haunted Robert Mitchum who was able to escape his past. She then made her first steps in adventure films, such as Adventure Island or the best-known A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court , alongside Bing Crosby .

But his early professional successes were not matched by happiness in his personal life. In 1948 she divorced her first husband, with whom she had her only child (actor Kent Lane), and she remarried in 1953, but her marriage again broke down. She would still get another two marriages and another divorce before marrying producer Ted Mann for the fifth time in 1978, and, this time, living happily until the death of her spouse in 2001; Her sixth marriage, in 2003, to Darol Wayne Carlson, also ended with the death of her husband, in 2017.

The decade of the 50 brought him a lot of work and the moment of greatest splendor in his career. Although his filmography is irregular in those years, he also shot quite consistent films, almost all in the western and adventure genres, although with some happy appearances in film noir thrillers, such as the wonderful Cry Danger (1952), While New York Sleeps (1956), by the great Fritz Lang or Slightly Scarlet , based on the novel by James M. Cain . In 1951 he coincided with Ronald Reagan in the first of the four films he shot with him: the western The Last Detachment (1951), the Hong Kong Adventures(1952), the thriller Tropic Zone (1953) and another western film, The Gambler (1955) . In those years, the adventure genre was represented by The Golden Hawk (1952), with Sterling Hayden , Serpent of the Nile (1953) or Jívaro (1955), among other lesser films.

But in the Hollywood of that time, the stars died incredibly early. And unfortunately that was happening little by little to Rhonda Fleming. She still had time, however, to shoot some very significant films, such as the mythical Duel of the Titans (1957), by John Sturges , or the drama After Darkness (1958). As striking as it may seem, from 1960 – when the actress was only 37 years old! – She and she practically only intervened in various episodes of television series, such as Caravan (series) ., and in the occasional telefilm. But that does not mean that the actress did not take advantage of the time. She is a member of various environmental, cultural, and health educational organizations. In particular, in 1991, together with her husband Ted, she launched the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women’s Comprehensive Care, in Los Angeles, dedicated to the gynecological care of women, and the following year she started another center with her name dedicated to the treatment of cancer. feminine.