Rhonda Fleming (born August 10, 1923) is an American film/television actress and singer.
She acted in more than forty films, mostly in the 1940s and 1950s, and became renowned as one of the most glamorous actresses of her day. She was nicknamed the "Queen of Technicolor" because her fair complexion and flaming red hair photographed exceptionally well in Technicolor.
Fleming was born as Marilyn Louis on August 10, 1923 in Hollywood, California, to Harold Cheverton Louis, a non-professional insurance salesman, and Effie Graham, who was a famous model and actress, who appeared opposite Al Jolson at New York's Winter Garden Theater, in the musical Dancing Around, from 1914 to 1915. Her grandfather was John C. Graham, a prominent actor, theater owner and newspaper editor in Utah. She began working as a film actress while attending Beverly Hills High School, from which she graduated in 1941. She was discovered by the well-known Hollywood agent Henry Willson. After appearing uncredited in several films, she received her first substantial role in the thriller Spellbound (1945), produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She followed this with supporting roles in another thriller, The Spiral Staircase (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak, the Randolph Scott western Abilene Town (1946), and the film noir classic Out of the Past (1947) with Robert Mitchum. Her first leading role came in Adventure Island (1947), a low-budget action film made in the two-color Cinecolor process and co-starring Rory Calhoun.