Merle Oberon (1900-1974)

Merle Oberon was one of Hollywood's top actresses during the 1930s and 1940s. She was hauntingly beautiful and appeared in numerous high quality productions including, 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' in 1934, 'The Dark Angel' in 1935 for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award, and 'Wuthering Heights' with Laurence Olivier in 1939. She was of Eurasian heritage and she spent her whole working life trying to conceal the fact.

Biography

She was born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson, on 19 February, 1911 in Bombay, India. The facts regarding her birth and family were deliberately falsified and obscured by the actress early in her career in order to conceal both her racial origins and the bizarre mystery surrounding her birth.

Mystery of her birth

From her first arrival in Hollywood, Merle's version of her origins claimed that she was born in Tasmania and christened Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson. She said that her father had been an army officer who had died in a hunting accident.

The truth was that her father was an English railway engineer from Darlington called Arthur Thompson, and not in the army. Thompson had a girlfriend in Bombay called Charlotte Selby who was a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Maori heritage.

Charlotte had arrived in Bombay with a baby, Constance Selby. When Constance was 12 years old she was impregnated by Thompson, her mother's boyfriend, and had a baby whom she called Merle.

Merle grew up thinking that Constance was her sister and Charlotte her mother. Later, when Constance joined her in Hollywood, Merle used to explain to friends that the older woman who lived in her house was her maid. Constance died in 1937 and when Merle later commissioned a portrait of her, she instructed the painter to lighten her mother's complexion to hide the fact that she was part-Indian.

Early years

As a child, Merle's nickname was 'Queenie'. Her early years were lived in poverty in Bombay. The family's living conditions improved when they moved to Calcutta in 1917. There Merle was educated at the prestigious ‘La Martiniere Calcutta’ school for girls after receiving a foundation scholarship. She was treated badly by her classmates because of her unconventional background and she eventually left the school to be taught at home.

It was in Calcutta that Merle developed a passion for films and acting and she began her performing life with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society. She had an obvious talent as well as great beauty and she soon began to meet the right contacts to further her growing ambition. When she was introduced to the Irish film director, Rex Ingram, he hired her as an uncredited extra in the 1929 British silent drama film ‘The Three Passions’. It was the start of a new life and a new career.

Movie Career

Merle began her career in British films with a number of unheralded walk-on roles between 1929 and 1932 in movies such as 'Alf's Button' in 1930, 'Never Trouble Trouble' in 1931 and 'Ebb Tide' in 1932. After performing well in 'Men of Tomorrow' in 1932 she was given a far more substantial role as Anne Boleyn in 'The Private Life of Henry VIII' in 1933. It was a role that got her noticed and after another good performance as Lady Marguerite Blakeney in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel' in 1934 she was swept up by the Hollywood agents and she departed England for New York.

Alexander Korda

There is no doubt that Merle's career received a boost initially from her relationship, and later her marriage, to Alexander Korda. Korda formed London Films in 1932, and the following year directed Charles Laughton in 'The Private Life of Henry VIII' which was a big hit and which was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Until 1933 Merle was known as 'Queenie Thompson and it was Korda who changed it to Merle Oberon for the Henry VIII picture. He married Merle in 1939 after helping her career with an introduction to Sam Goldwyn when she left England for America.

Hollywood Actress

Merle's first movie in Hollywood was 'The Dark Angel' in 1935 and she received a Best Actress Academy Award Nomination for it. It was to be her only nomination, but it made her a star on both sides of the Atlantic and she began to receive offers to appear in good quality movies such as 'These Three' in 1936, 'The Divorce of Lady X' in 1938 and 'Over the Moon' in 1939. Also in 1939 she appeared in her best known role, as Cathy Linton opposite Lawrence Olivier in 'Wuthering Heights'. It proved to be the highpoint of her movie career.

Merle appeared in no less than 15 films during the 1940s but most were largely forgettable with the exception of the well received 'Berlin Express' in 1948.

Later Career

In the ensuing years Merle appeared in fewer and fewer films but began a new career in television in 1954, appearing in 'The Best of Broadway' TV series and then from 1956 appeared as host of the series 'Assignment Foreign Legion'.

Her final big screen appearance was in 'Interval' in 1973 after which she retired from moviemaking.

Personal

Merle's outstanding beauty attracted many admirers. In early-30s London, Oberon became a star at the famous Cafe de Paris and also the girlfriend of the popular (and notorious) Grenada-born jazz musician, Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson.

Her impact in Hollywood was equally striking. In 1934 she announced her engagement to American studio executive Joseph M. Schenck and she is understood to have had many boyfriends including David Niven, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Howard, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Robert Ryan. This who's who of Hollywood male stars could only be surpassed by a member of the British Royal Family. And so it proved. Merle is believed to have had a relationship with Prince Philip, husband of the Queen. Merle kept a signed photograph of Philip in a silver frame and entertained him at her estate in Mexico City.

She married Alexander Korda in 1939 and became the first Lady Korda when he was knighted in 1942. Whilst still married, she had a brief affair in 1941 with Richard Hillary, an RAF fighter pilot who had been badly burned in the Battle of Britain. They met while he was on a goodwill tour of the United States..

She married four times in all. After divorcing Korda in 1945, she married cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Ballard devised a special camera light for her to eliminate on film her facial scars suffered in a 1937 accident. The light became known as the "Obie". She and Ballard divorced in 1949. Merle next married Italian-born industrialist Bruno Pagliai in 1957. They adopted two children and lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. In 1973, Oberon met then 36-year-old Dutch actor Robert Wolders while they filmed 'Interval'. In 1975, aged 62, she divorced Pagliai and married Wolders, who was 25 years her junior.

She lived a quiet retirement with Wolders in Malibu, California. Merle Oberon died of a stroke on November 23, 1979, in Malibu, California. She was 68. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA, in the Garden of Remembrance.

Merle Oberon Filmography