Saturdays with the Stars: Rhonda Fleming

Each month of 2019 we will be looking at the careers of leading ladies of Classical Hollywood who were never nominated for an Academy Award as part of our "Saturdays with the Stars" series.  Last month, our focus was on Lizabeth Scott, one of the forgotten leading ladies of the film noir era who had a remarkably vibrant off-screen life while crafting the femme fatale trope.  This month we will hit an historic moment in the series by profiling our first living actress, Ms. Rhonda Fleming.

Rhonda Fleming, known as the "Queen of Technicolor" in her day due to her vibrant red hair and unparalleled beauty, was discovered by noted Hollywood agent Henry Willson (who would become infamous years later for his representation of actors like Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, and Guy Madison, as well as accusations that he would enforce "casting couch" requirements with these handsome young men).  Fleming was signed without a screen test to David O. Selznick, appearing in classic films throughout the 1940's in supporting roles, including Since You Went Away, The Spiral Staircase, Out of the Past, and Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, making her one of the last remaining actors to have had a significant part in one of Hitch's films.  In the late 1940's, Fleming got the one-two punch of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (her first Technicolor picture) and The Great Lover with Bob Hope, which cemented her as a star & leading woman.

In the 1950's she left Selznick to sign with Paramount, appearing opposite actors like Ronald Reagan, Dick Powell, Errol Flynn, Charlton Heston, and Fernando Lamas in a series of pictures.  3-D was a trend at the time, and Fleming made several pictures in the new format, perhaps pervertedly chosen for such movies considering her, ahem, "statuesque" physique.  Throughout the decade she appeared in a series of B-pictures, frequently thrillers like Slightly Scarlet (with one of her "redhead rivals" Arlene Dahl) and the noted Fritz Lang film While the City Sleeps.  As the decade continued, though, she was nearing forty and was largely a leading woman who had never really broken out in a major way with audiences, and eventually resorted to television and nightclub acts.  In her personal life, she managed to work her way through six husbands, including Oscar-nominated producer Hal Bartlett, and became an outspoken supporter of bringing prayer back into schools (dirty secret-most of your favorite classic Hollywood stars were far more conservative than the ones that populate Tinseltown today).

I've seen her in Spellbound and Out of the Past (I believe the only two of her films I've seen) and loved her in both, so I'm excited to give Fleming a chance.  Fleming's career is odd in that she worked with her best directors (people like Hitchcock, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur) during her pre-stardom years, and years later opined that she went more for the money than in trying to create great films.  This month we'll see if Fleming was being too hard on herself, or if her best work was truly before she became a headliner.