Early years Flemyng was born in
Liverpool, the son of George Gilbert Flemyng, a physician, and his second wife Rowena Eleanor,
née Jacques. He was educated at
Haileybury, and was then a medical student before abandoning medicine in favour of the theatre. In June 1931, at the age of 19, Flemyng made his stage debut, playing Kenneth Raglan in
Patrick Hamilton's thriller
Rope at the County Theatre,
Truro. Flemyng stayed at the Playhouse for three seasons, playing a wide range of roles. While there, he met his future wife, the actress Carmen Sugars. The new play opened at the
St James's Theatre; reviews for the piece were lukewarm but the cast, including Flemyng, were praised by the press. He played in four more light comedy roles between September 1935 and March 1936, before his first big success, of which the director Derek Granger wrote: The play ran for 1,025 performances. Fleming played the role for 18 months, before handing over to
Hubert Gregg for the rest of the run. He remained on
Broadway to play Makepiece Lovell in
No Time for Comedy; his notices were good: the stars of the production were
Laurence Olivier and
Katherine Cornell but the reviewer in
The Stage said that Flemyng "comes close to walking away with the show". In September 1939, on the outbreak of the
Second World War, Flemying left the cast and returned to England to join the armed forces. was
mentioned in despatches, and was appointed
OBE (military) in 1945. At the end of the war Flemyng's first appearance was as Lord Harpenden in Rattigan's
While the Sun Shines in an
ENSA tour that finished at the
Théâtre Marigny, Paris. He reprised the role in
a film version of the play, released in 1948. Flemyng was succeeded by
Hugh Sinclair. In 1952–53 Flemyng toured the US, co-starring with Cornell, in
Somerset Maugham's
The Constant Wife. In 1954 he played a serious role, General Rupert Forster, a war criminal, in
John Whiting's
Marching Song. Later in 1954 Flemyng appeared at the
ANTA Playhouse, Broadway in a short-lived adaptation of
Henry James's
Portrait of a Lady. After a British tour in
John Van Druten's comedy
Bell, Book and Candle, Flemyng returned to Broadway in January 1957 to create the role of James Callifer in
Graham Greene's
The Potting Shed. In the same year he made his first
Hollywood film, accepting
Stanley Donen's invitation to appear in
Funny Face. In the 1960s Flemyng played a wide range of roles from old classics to heavyweight modern works and light comedy. He played Dr Sloper in
The Heiress (1964), toured Australia as Anthony Wilcox in the boardroom melodrama
Difference of Opinion (1965), returned to the US in
The Cocktail Party, this time in the central role of Harcourt-Reilly (1965), and toured Britain as Garry Essendine in
Present Laughter (1966). and the following year he co-starred in
William Douglas-Home's
The Kingfisher with
Michael Denison and
Dulcie Gray. He appeared for two years at the
Savoy Theatre in Michael Frayn's
Noises Off, taking over the role of Selsdon Mowbray from
Michael Aldridge in early 1983 and handing it over to
Hugh Paddick at the end of 1984. In 1988 he played Colonel Pickering in
My Fair Lady to the Higgins of
Denis Quilley and the Eliza of
Liz Robertson. The following year he appeared with
Michael Gambon and
Jack Lemmon at the Haymarket in ''Veterans' Day'' in which they played veterans of, respectively, the
First and Second World Wars and the
Vietnam War. In his late seventies Flemyng went on an arduous tour of India with
John Dexter's Haymarket company, playing the title role in
Julius Caesar, and Oedipus in
Creon,
Stephen Spender's version of
Sophocles'
Oedipus Rex. ==Television==