Una Fleming

Marian Una Strain Fleming Adams (1899 – October 26, 1966), who performed professionally as Una Fleming, was an American dancer and actress whose Broadway career spanned the years 1919 to 1920.

Fleming was raised in Los Angeles by her mother, Carrie B. Malcolm Strain Fleming, and her stepfather, A. F. Fleming. Her biological father, John Strain, who had been born in Ireland, died in 1904. She received her formal training at the Egan School of Music and Drama in Los Angeles and studied dance under Matildita Fernandez. From her early teens she performed at public events, and in 1914 she was crowned Queen of May at Los Angeles May Day festivities. By 1915 she had joined a vaudeville dancing act, and the following year she served as premiere danseuse in the ballet of the California Grand Opera Company.

Fleming appeared in the silent film The Talk of the Town in 1918. Her Broadway work began in 1919, when she danced in The Velvet Lady, followed by The Sweetheart Shop in 1920 and Her Family Tree in 1921. Alongside her stage engagements, she also performed in vaudeville programs in New York. Theatre critic Burns Mantle noted that she danced with unusual grace and identified her as part of a broader trend of American-born dancers being cast in specialty roles previously reserved for foreign performers. In 1919, McClure's Magazine included her in a photo feature alongside other young women dancers.

Fleming's performing career continued beyond Broadway. In 1925 she danced in George M. Cohan's Little Nellie Kelly in Oakland, and in 1926 she appeared with Gloria Foy and Lou Holtz in Patsy in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Fleming married four times across three marriages to different husbands. Her first husband was businessman Carleton Adams, whom she married in 1920; the couple had a daughter, Barbara, divorced in 1927, remarried in 1928, and divorced again in 1935. She subsequently married actor Freeman Wood, a union recorded by 1940. In 1949 she married Gardner T. Glassell, who died in 1958. Fleming died on October 26, 1966, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, at the age of 67.