Susan Fleming (February 19, 1908 – December 22, 2002) was an American actress 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.

Biographie

Fleming was happy to leave show business, serving as Marx's "valet" and raising their four children. In addition to his widespread interest in playing musical instruments, including his trademark harp, Fleming helped foster her husband's interest in painting; she would make elaborate frames for his paintings, as well as creating her own works of art. The two collected many artworks, which Fleming donated widely after her husband's death. They moved to Palm Springs, California, a few years after the completion of the 1949 film Love Happy, the last movie the Marx Brothers made together under that name. In Palm Springs, Fleming became active in local community affairs, and was elected to the Palm Springs Unified School District Board of Education.

Harpo died at age 75 on September 28, 1964, their 28th wedding anniversary. Following his death, Fleming became more involved in local activities, including the local League of Women Voters. She became an advisory planning commissioner for Rancho Mirage, California, and headed an organization dedicated to preserving development on the fragile desert hillsides. She served a total of 18 years on the district board of education and ran and lost in a campaign for the California State Assembly. Honoring her contributions, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to her in 2002.

In a 1981 decision later overruled by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a case brought by Fleming, federal judge William C. Conner ruled that the producers of A Day in Hollywood / A Night in the Ukraine had improperly used the Marx Brothers characters in their Broadway theatre production and that the publicity rights of the comedians, even after their deaths, overrode the First Amendment issues raised by the show's creators. In April 1980, Conner refused to issue a preliminary injunction and allowed producer Alexander H. Cohen to open as planned.

Fleming's autobiography, Do Tell, about her life with Harpo Marx, was never published.