Quick Facts:
Full Name | Ethel Janet Fleming |
---|---|
Date of Birth | 1890/12/25 |
Birth Country | USA |
Birth Place | Ohio |
Ethnicity | American |
Father Name | Alexander Frew Fleming |
Mother Name | Janet Fleming |
Before she became an actress, Ethel Fleming was a swimmer who, according to one newspaper, earned the nickname “surf girl” for spending up to four hours a day in the water during the summer. In her native Staten Island, where she had developed a reputation as an endurance swimmer, she had been known to swim up to 7 miles (11 km) before being rescued by boats. She was described as being robust, athletic, and having a great passion for outdoor sports.
What was the net worth of Ethel Fleming?
Ethel Fleming was a Hollywood sensation in the early 1900s. She has roughly sixteen big-screen credits in her acting career. At the time of her death, Fleming’s net worth was estimated to be at $2 million.

Early in the 1900s, Fleming got her start in show business as a chorus girl. She had never gone on a theatrical tour outside of New York City until her appearance in The Summer Widowers at the Alvin Theater in October 1910. Until they were certain that every member would be thoroughly watched, her parents were apprehensive to send her on tour with the company.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the company’s most remote location, so Ethel headed there. The Pretender was staged in 1918, and Fleming played the lead with William Desmond. She then shared the lead role with Desmond in the 1923 staging of The Fighting Pretender.
Fleming began her acting career with Famous Players and subsequently went on to appear in supporting roles in movies like Fox and Edison.
His best performances were in The Pretender, The Silent Rider, and Smiles. His wife, Ray Kroc, was an American businesswoman and entrepreneur who passed away in 1984 with a net worth of $600 million. That is comparable to $1.4 billion now after inflation.
Who was Fleming’s first husband?
In the summer of 1915, Ethel Fleming traveled to Los Angeles to study film painting, and it was there that she first met William Courtleigh Jr. They met many times, and although though neither had thought about getting married at the time, their connection developed quickly.

After just three weeks of dating and a day off from work, the couple strolled by a registrar’s office, when Courtleigh casually proposed that they apply for a marriage license. Fleming did not take Courtleigh’s proposal seriously. Fleming recalled how “it all transpired so swiftly” when a clerk asked her to sign a document.
The pair wed on July 25, 1915, in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California, and moved into their first home, a bungalow, in August of the same year. Courtleigh passed away from pneumonia in 1918.
Their three-year marriage ended with her husband’s death in 1918. Since her career was at its height at the time, she didn’t have any children.
How was the second wedding of Ethel?
Ethel Fleming, an aspiring actress in the early 1900s, wed Ray Kroc, a salesman who was only twelve years old at the time. The only reason they were together at the time was because they were once high school loves.
After being married in 1922, the pair was together for forty years. Surprisingly, she quit her lucrative acting career shortly after being married so she could spend more time with her family.
The two have been inextricably intertwined for a long time.
Fleming welcomed Marilyn Kroc, the couple’s only child, into their family. As the saying goes, every successful man has a lady by his side. Ray Kroc, the inventor of McDonald’s, had his financial success while still wed to Fleming.
Was Ray Kroc was divorced by Ethel?
Ethel Fleming was a Hollywood sensation in the early 1900s. In her acting career, she has appeared in around sixteen motion pictures. Even though everyone thought Ethel Fleming and Ray Kroc’s marriage was lovely and admirable, they had problems.
The majority of them were baffled by McDonald’s as the reason for their divorce. Fleming vehemently rejected the request from McDonald’s founder, who was focused with business, to sell milkshake machines.

Following the success of McDonald’s, Kroc became preoccupied with his business, which led to their divorce. Kroc married Jane Dobbins Green and Joan Beverly Smith following their divorce, in contrast to Fleming, who never wed.
When did Ethel Fleming passed away?
Alexander Frew Fleming and Janet Fleming welcomed Ethel Janet Fleming into the world on December 25, 1890 in Ohio, United States. Not to be confused with Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish pharmacologist and scientist well recognized for creating the first antibiotic, benzylpenicillin (Penicillin G).
Fleming spent some of her formative years in Melrose Park, Cook County, Illinois, where she was raised. She had five brothers and sisters: Mae Belle Nerger, Andrew Edward Fleming, Malcolm Blair Fleming, and Alexander Fleming.

There is no information available about her childhood or the jobs her parents had. But she did go to the same high school as Ray Kroc, the Lincoln School in Oak Park. Ethel went on to become an actress and performer. Her roles in famous movies like The Kiss (1916), The Wonderful Thing (1921), and Under Cover (1923) are what people most often remember her for (1916).
Ethel Fleming passed away on December 26, 1965. The former celebrity lived a peaceful life outside of the limelight after her divorce. She thus passed away at age 75 in Miami, Florida, from natural causes.