Rhonda Fleming, the red-haired, green-eyed beauty who lit up the screen in such films as Spellbound, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, has died. She was 97.
Fleming, who also sparkled in Out of the Past (1947), the first of her many appearances in fabulous film noirs, died Wednesday, her secretary Carla Sapon announced.
Not too far removed from attending Beverly Hills High School, Fleming appeared as a nymphomaniac in a mental institution in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), then followed up by playing George Brent's assistant, among those who reside in a creepy mansion, in Robert Siodmak's dark suspense thriller The Spiral Staircase (1945). ...
Legend has it that a cinematographer, as an exercise, once tried to shoot her in a way that would make her look bad. No matter the angle or technique, he concluded, Fleming always came out picture-perfect.
Fleming was married to theater chain mogul Ted Mann (of Mann's Chinese Theatre fame) from 1978 until his death in January 2001, and together they were a philanthropic force in Southern California. ...
In 1991, she and Mann established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center, providing gynecologic and obstetric care to women, and they funded a resource center for women with cancer three years later. The couple also set up the Rhonda Fleming Mann Research Fellowship at the City of Hope.
"I'm not out to push me anymore," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. "These centers are in existence because, even though we had the best medical care, we had no psychological support. No one to turn to for the spiritual [support]. No environment that was pleasant to be in while she suffered so. There wasn't even a curtain in the examining room to hide personal things like your wig, or a prosthesis." ...
The Hollywood Reporter
