Susan Fleming

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Susan Fleming February 19 1908 December 22 2002 was an American actress and the wife of comic actor Harpo Marx Fleming was known as the Girl with the Million Dollar Legs for a role she played in the W C Fields film Million Dollar Legs 1932 Her big stage break which led to her Hollywood career was as a Ziegfeld girl performing in The Ziegfeld Follies Fleming was from New York City and went to school in Forest Hills Queens After starring in the Ziegfeld Follies productions on Broadway she started appearing in movies One of her earliest film roles was a starring role in Range Feud as Judy Walton the love interest of John Wayne Fleming combined her dancing and cinematic interests in the 1932 movie Million Dollar Legs in which she played the daughter of W C Fields character As part of a publicity stunt for the film her legs were insured for the eponymous million dollars Fleming was unhappy with Hollywood stating in a 1995 interview that she found nothing more boring than working on a movie I hated it At a dinner party held in the home of Samuel Goldwyn she was seated next to Harpo Marx and found him fascinating Despite his silent persona in films she found Marx to be a warm fun darling man to talk to She pursued him relentlessly dating for four years and proposing marriage to him on three separate occasions before he accepted She ended her Hollywood career when she married Marx on September 28 1936 Flemings wedding to Marx was revealed to the public when President of the United States Franklin D Roosevelt sent the couple a telegram of congratulations in November Marx had sent a thank you letter to Roosevelt in appreciation for a signed photograph of the President in which Marx had stated that he was in line for congratulations too having been married since September in an unspecified little town up North Fleming outlived Marx by almost forty years during which she was an artist and activist in the Palm Springs area She died at age 94 on December 22 2002 of a heart attack at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage She was survived by a daughter three sons five grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren