Rhonda Fleming, the actress with renowned red hair and exceptional capability, has died at the age of 97. She was most recognized for her roles in films with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan, and other stars of the 1940s and 1950s. Rhonda’s assistant informed The New York Times that she passed
After winning her first color film, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, released in 1949, she was lavished with attention. Her fiery hair captivated the audience, and other filmmakers clamored for her services.
Rhonda, on the other hand, was uncomfortable with all of the attention her appearance was receiving. She wanted people to focus on her acting skills rather than her appearance.
“Suddenly my green eyes were green. My red hair was flaming red. My skin was porcelain white. 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.”
Before he entered politics, Ronald Reagan worked with Robert Redford in several films, including The Last Outpost and Tennessee’s Partner. She famously stated of the future president during his campaign: “He surprised everyone because he never looked in a mirror. How many actors can you say that about?”
Rhonda Fleming was a gifted musician who was highly appreciated by her coworkers and fans. She will be dearly missed.
Rhonda wanted people to focus on her acting skills rather than her appearance. “Suddenly my green eyes were green. My red hair was flaming red. My skin was porcelain white. 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.”
In the 1950s, Hollywood was at its peak. The movie industry had been growing for fifty years and had become a major American cultural force. Foreign films were being imported and shown all over America. Movie theaters were also being build outside of urban centers due to the growing popularity. On average, a person would see 40-50 movies a year in a theater.
A person would be able to find foreign imports, retreads from the previous decade, independent productions, or big-budget studio fare. Hollywood film actors has been picked from Broadway actors who refused to go on camera, stage actors from other countries that came to Britain and America with immigrants before World War I and never left. The movie stars of the era were get paid very well for their work.
4,000 theaters were based in America with many more outside of the country. Independent studio productions had dropped to 5% of the total releases in 1947-48 following the collapse of the major studios system in the late 1940s due to government anti-trust actions. This brought about one hundred smaller firms producing films in the late forties and early 1950s.
Studios began looking for new stars that were not from Broadway or immigrants from Europe. However, the idea of a star was beginning to end in the 1930s, though they still played a major roll in Hollywood films up until this point.
