Actor. He is remembered for his role as the trail boss Gil Favor in the CBS television series "Rawhide,"which aired 1959 to 1966. He made $200,000 the first year, but left the top-rated show at the end of the 1965 filming. He had a difficult childhood. Born as Edward Heddy, Jr. with a club foot, he walked with crutches as a child. Having a physically-abusive father, he, at the age of eight years old, attempted to shoot his father but the gun jammed. He left home, living on the streets of Los Angeles, California, before taking a train to Chicago, Illinois. As a Great Depression hobo, he supported himself with odd jobs, sometimes working for criminal-types. At the age of eleven, he was wounded in a gunfight between two men, hospitalized, and returned home to his now-divorced mother. He received little formal education, joined the Merchant Marines, and, during World War II in 1942, joined the United States Navy, serving as a Master Carpenter in the Seabees. After an accident of a 200-pound block of steel slipped from a hoist and hit him, he had four plastic surgeries on his injured jaw, nose, and forehead. This made the 6'3" man even more handsome. After the war, he was employed at Paramount Studio as a laborer and took acting classes at night. He had made his acting debut in 1944 in a military training film, did stage work in Chicago and New York City, and, in 1951, starred in the DuMont TV network children series "Major Dell Conway of the Flying Tigers." Singing and dancing, he appeared in the 1955 Broadway musical "Plain and Fancy." He appeared in two classic Sci-fi films "Conquest of Space" in 1955 and "Queen of Outer Space" with Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1956. He also appeared in the 1966 romantic comedy, "The Glass Bottom Boat" starring Doris Day. On television, he appeared in three 1966 episodes of the Western series, "Bonanza, " which were "Peace Officer" and the two-part episode, "Pursued." In the summer of 1966, Fleming had traveled to Peru for the filming of the two-part episode of the ABC TV movie entitled "High Jungle." His co-star was Greek actor, Nico Minardos. The two had a scene of paddling down the Huallaga River in full rapids in a canoe, which was a primitive dug-out tree trunk. The remote filming location was a four-hour drive from civilization on a bus. The two got into the canoe, going down the fierce rapids, when they knew that the waters were too rough. Though being told to stay with the canoe in event of an accident, Fleming, an excellent swimmer and surfer, decided to jump from the canoe and swim ashore. When he jumped, the canoe overturned, causing Minardos to go into the water; he barely made it to shore. One of the local Natives jumped in the river to save Fleming, grabbing him by his hair, but had to let him go, as the rapids were taking him down. Fleming's body disappeared in the rapid's froth around a rock. The filming crew had flown to Lima and were in Hollywood by the time Natives had located his drowned and mutilated body three or four days later downriver. In the magazine article in "Caretas" Edition No. 1742, October 10, 2002, the coroner reports that Fleming's body was donated to San Fernando Medical School at the University of San Marco in Lima, with the remains cremated afterwards, and may have been buried in a common grave in the Presbitero Masestro Cemetery in Lima.