ACTOR
Rhonda Fleming
- Known for
- Spellbound (1945), The Spiral Staircase (1946)
20 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
Rhonda Fleming is an actor best known for Spellbound and The Spiral Staircase.
- #001
- #002
Fleming's mother was a famous Swedish blonde model who appeared on the covers of Harper's and other major magazines in New York, and later performed for two years in the Al Jolson show "Dancing Around" at the Wintergarden Theatre, rising from understudy to a leading role. Her father worked in insurance. Her parents divorced when Rhonda was ten, and her older sister Beverly Louis (1918-1990) divorced when she was fifteen. As a child, young Rhonda took light opera lessons for ten years.
- #003
- #004
- #005
- #006
Fleming performed a one-off singing show in the Tropicana's Las Vegas showroom, and also appeared in a solo concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs at the Hollywood Bowl. She also toured for ten weeks with Skitch Henderson, focusing on the music of George Gershwin. In 1958 she recorded an album for Columbia Records.
- #007
- #008
- #009
- #010
- #011
She attended and graduated from Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California (class of 1941). The school was also attended by, among others, Angelina Jolie, Michael Klesic, Nicolas Cage, Lenny Kravitz, David Schwimmer, Jonathan Silverman, Gina Gershon, Jackie Cooper, Rob Reiner, Antonio Sabato Jr., Pauly Shore, Michael Tolkin, Betty White, Corbin Bernsen, Elizabeth Daily, Albert Brooks and Crispin Glover.
- #012
- #013
- #014
- #015
- #016
- #017
- #018
Her first professional name, Marilyn Lane, was set aside because it wrongly associated her with the famous film sisters Lola Lane, Priscilla Lane and Rosemary Lane, with Rosemary Lane seen as a possibility. Agent Henry Willson then suggested (seemingly arbitrarily) Ronda Fleming: when studio head David O. Selznick signed Fleming with 20th Century-Fox, he decided that Ronda would be spelled Rhonda.
- #019
- #020