Actress remembered
The fiery red-haired actress Rhonda
Fleming died Wednesday at the age of
97./
Actress Rhonda Fleming, the fiery redhead who appeared with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan and other film stars of the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was
97.
Fleming died Wednesday in Santa Monica, California, assistant Carla Sapon told The Associated Press.
From her first film in color, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court ” (1949) with Bing Crosby, Fleming became immensely popular with producers because of her vivid hues. It was an attraction she would later regret.
“Suddenly my green eyes were green. My red hair was flaming red. My skin was porcelain white,” Fleming remarked in a 1990 interview. “There was suddenly all this attention on how I looked rather than the roles I was playing.
“I’d been painted into a corner by the studios, who never wanted more from me than my looking good and waltzing through a parade of films like ‘The Redhead and the Cowboy,’” she said.
Before Reagan entered politics, the actress costarred with him in “Hong Kong,” “Tropic Zone,”
“The Last Outpost” and “Tennessee’s Partner.”
“He surprised everyone because he never looked in a mirror,” she once said of Reagan. “How many actors can you say that about?”
Fleming possessed a fine singing voice, and later in her career sang onstage in Las Vegas and in a touring act.
In the big-studio era, many new personalities were publicized as having been discovered in quirky ways: Kim Novak while riding a bicycle past an agent’s office, Lana Turner spotted in a malt shop.
In Fleming’s case, young Marilyn Louis was reported to have been headed to class at Beverly
Hills High School when a man followed her in a big black car and told her, “You ought to be in pictures.” She eluded him, but he turned up at her home and offered to be her agent.
Legend or not, at 19 Louis was awarded a sixmonth contract at the studio of David O. Selznick and a new name: Rhonda Fleming. She played a bit part in the 1944 wartime drama
“Since You Went Away,” and then Alfred Hitchcock chose her to play a nymphomaniac in “Spellbound,” starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.
“I rushed home, and my mother and I looked up ‘nymphomaniac’ in the dictionary,” she recalled. “We were both shocked.”
“Spellbound” led to another suspense film, “The Spiral Staircase,” in which she was strangled by the villain, George Brent. With Selznick concentrating on the career of his wife, Jennifer Jones, he lost interest in his contract players, and Fleming left the studio to freelance.
Her next films: “Abilene Town,” a Randolph Scott Western; “Out of the Past,” a film noir with
Robert Mitchum; and “Adventure Island,” a tropics thriller starring Rory Calhoun.
She won a role in “A Connecticut Yankee,” a Crosby musical based on the Mark Twain story, after Deanna Durbin dropped out to retire to France. Crosby was so impressed that he recommended her to Bob Hope, with whom she starred in “The Great Lover.”
She was born in Los Angeles in 1923. Her mother, Effie Graham, had appeared in a 1914 Broadway musical with Al Jolson, and her grandfather was a theatrical producer in Salt Lake City. She studied acting, but as a backup also took classes in shorthand, typing and bookkeeping.
Buffalo native to sing on “The Voice”
A Western New Yorker is going to be singing on this season’s edition of “The Voice” that has its season premiere at 8 p.m. Monday and continues at 8 p.m. Tuesday on NBC’S local affiliate WGRZ-TV (Channel 2).
Buffalo native Cami Clune, 20, is expected to at least be seen during the blind audition part of the popular NBC reality series in a season without an in-person audience other than judges Blake Shel
ton, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson and John Legend.
It isn’t clear if the graduate of Christian Central Academy in Williamsville will be seen in the first two nights of the blind auditions.
However, she is shown briefly in a NBC promo for the series and also is highlighted in a blog about contestants in “The Voice.” In the blog, she described her musical style as alternative, pop and R&B.
Raised in Buffalo, Clune may be familiar to anyone who has seen her perform at many restaurants, bars and events in Western
New York.
She has performed the national anthem before games played by the Buffalo Bills, Sabres, Bisons and Bandits and has earned several local honors since she was a teenager.
The list includes: Worship Artist of the Year in 2013; Buffalo Italian Idol Winner in 2014; Amherst Idol Winner in 2015; and Buffalo Sings Winner in 2017 (Buffalo Philharmonic).
In addition, she is the founder of the Backyard Broadway charitable organization.