Merle Oberon

At 68 years old, Merle Oberon physical status not available right now. We will update Merle Oberon's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson, 19 February 1911 – November 29, 1979), a British actress who began her film career as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933).

She travelled to the United States to film Samuel Goldwyn's films after her success in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934).

For her role in The Dark Angel (1935), she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

A 1937 traffic accident ended her career, but she recovered and continued working in film and television until 1973.

Early life

Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson was born in Bombay, British India, on 19 February 1911. In honor of Queen Mary, who travelled India with King George V in 1911, Merle was given the name "Queenie" as a name.

Merle shielded herself from the truth about her parentage, claiming she was born in Tasmania, Australia, and that her birth records had been lost in a fire.

Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways and his partner, Charlotte Selby, a Ceylonese, was raised as the daughter of Ceylon's mother (Sri Lanka). Mori origins were also present in her mother's mother. However, Merle's biological mother, Constance, was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, according to her birth certificate. Charlotte gave birth to Constance at the age of 14, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation. Charlotte Merle was raised as Constance's half-sister in order to avoid scandal.

Constance married Alexander Soares and had four other children: Edna, Douglas, Harry, and Stanislaus (Stan). At an early age, Edna and Douglas immigrated to the United Kingdom at an early age. Stanislaus was the only child to have his father's surname Soares and lived in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Harry then migrated to Toronto, Canada, seizing Selby, Charlotte's maiden name. When Harry tracked down Merle's birth certificate in Bombay's Indian government papers, he was shocked to discover that he was not her nephew, not her nephew. He attempted to visit her in Los Angeles but she declined to see him. Harry withheld this information from Oberon's biographer Charles Higham, but later revealed it only to Maree Delofski, the creator of the 2002 documentary The Trouble with Merle, which investigated the various conflicting interpretations of Merle's origins.

Witi Ihimaera, a New Zealand author, borrows from Oberon's buried South Asian and Maori roots for the book White Lies, which was later turned into the 2013 film White Lies.

Arthur Thompson, who was 3 years old at the Battle of the Somme, died of pneumonia on the Western Front in 1914. Merle and Charlotte lived in shabby apartments in Bombay for a few years. They returned to Calcutta in 1917, the first time in Kolkata (present-day Kolkata). Oberon was awarded a foundation scholarship to attend La Martiniere Calcutta for Girls, one of Calcutta's best private schools. She was regularly mocked for her mixed ethnicity, prompting her to drop classes and receive lessons at home.

Oberon appeared with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society for the first time. She was also enamored of films and loved going out to nightclubs. Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, an Indian journalist, claimed that Merle served as a telephone operator in Calcutta under the name Queenie Thomson and took the title Queenie Thomson and won a competition at Firpo's Restaurant before beginning her film career.

Merle dated Colonel Ben Finney in Firpo's 1929; however, when Oberon saw Charlotte one night at her apartment, he realized he was of mixed ancestry and ended the friendship. Finney, on the other hand, promised to introduce her to Rex Ingram of Victorine Studios (whom she knew through his friendship with Barbara La Marr), if she were able to fly to France, which she happily did. Oberon and her mother discovered that they had no benefactor after packing all their possessions and moving to France, although Ingram had a good word for Oberon with Ingram at the Nice studios. Ingram adored Oberon's exotic appearance and asked her to be a co-star in a film titled The Three Passions.

Personal life

Charlotte Selby, Oberon's mother who was actually her birth grandmother, died in 1937. (Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's daughter, Constance, who was 12 years old when Merle was born.) Oberon commissioned paintings of Charlotte based on an old photograph (but depicting Charlotte with lighter skin), which hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.

In 1939, Oberon married director Alexander Korda. When she was married, she had a brief encounter with Richard Hillary, an RAF fighter pilot who had been seriously wounded in the Battle of Britain. They met while on a goodwill tour of the United States. The Last Enemy, his best-selling autobiography, was released later this year. Oberon had an on-again, off-again affair with actor John Wayne from 1938 to 1947.

Oberon became Lady Korda after her husband was knighted by George VI in 1942 for his service to the war effort. The couple lived at Hills House in Denham, England, at the time. Lucien Ballard, a filmtographer, was divorced in 1945 by the woman who married him in 1945. Ballard created a special camera light for her in order to minimize the visibility of her facial scars from the 1937 disaster. The light was once known as the "Obie." In 1949, she and Ballard separated.

Oberon married Bruno Pagliai, an Italian-born industrialist, who raised two children with him and lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico. When Oberon shot Interval in 1973, they met then 36-year-old Dutch actor Robert Wolders. Oberon divorced Pagliai and married Wolders, who was 25 years old at the time, in 1975.

Oberon produced a "cover story" about her birth and childhood in Tasmania, Australia, with her birth records being destroyed in a fire, to avoid prejudice against her mixed heritage. Since her death, the tale began to unravel. Oberon has only been to Australia twice. Her first visit to Disneyland in 1965 was on a film festival. Another trip to Hobart was planned, but after journalists in Sydney demanded for information about her early life, she became ill and then headed to Mexico shortly afterwards.

She planned to visit Hobart for a Lord Mayoral reception in 1978, the year before her death. The Lord Mayor of Hobart became aware that there was no proof she had been born in Tasmania just a few minutes before the function, but to save face went ahead with the celebration. Oberon, who to many's displeasure, denied she had been born in Tasmania just a few hours after arriving at the reception. She denied claiming sickness and was unwilling to answer questions about her background. On the way to the reception, she had told her chauffeur that she and her father, who became sick while the ship was passing Hobart, were sick. They were brought ashore so he could be cared for, and they spent some of their early years on the island. During her Hobart stay, she stayed in her hotel, gave no other interviews, and did not attend the theater named in her honor.

Source

Acting career

Oberon was born in England in 1928 at the age of 17. She appeared in minor and unbilled roles in various films as Queenie O'Brien. "I couldn't dance, sing, write, or paint." The only viable opening seemed to be in some manner in which I could use my face. This was no more than a hundred other faces in fact, but it did have a remarkably photogenic quality," she told a reporter at Film Weekly in 1939.

Anne Boleyn (1933) opposite Charles Laughton, gave her a major boost in her film career when director Alexander Korda took an interest and gave her a small but important part in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). The film was a huge success, and she was then given leading roles, including Lady Blakeney, in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, who became her lover for a time.

Oberon's career prospered as a result of her intercourse with, and later marriage to, Korda. She sold "shares" of her work to producer Samuel Goldwyn, who gave her good vehicles in Hollywood. Her "mother" stayed behind in England. Oberon received her sole Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for Goldwyn's The Dark Angel (1935) (1935). Around this time, she had a serious affair with David Niven, and one biographer even wanted to marry her, but she was not loyal to her.

She was chosen to appear in Korda's 1937 film I, Claudius, as Messalina, but her involvement in a car accident ended in the film being cut off. She continued to appear in Wuthering Heights (1939), as George Sand in A Song to Remember (1945), and as the Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954).

Oberon's skin tone was harmed by a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs, according to Princess Merle, the biography written by Roy Moseley. Alexander Korda sent her to a New York City skin specialist, where she underwent multiple dermabrasion procedures. The results, on the other hand, were only partially successful; without makeup, apparent pitting, and indentation of her skin could be seen.

Source