Merle Oberon was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel.
44 Facts About Merle Oberon
2.
Merle Oberon was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Catherine Earnshaw in the 1939 film adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights directed by William Wyler.
3.
Estelle Merle Oberon O'Brien Thompson was born in Bombay, British India, on 19 February 1911.
4.
Merle Oberon was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911.
5.
For most of her life, Merle Oberon protected herself by concealing the truth about her parentage, claiming that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia, and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire.
6.
Merle Oberon was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a Welsh mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon.
7.
Merle Oberon attempted to visit her in Los Angeles, but she refused to see him.
8.
New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera used Merle Oberon's hidden South Asian and alleged Maori heritage as the inspiration for the novel White Lies, which was turned into the 2013 movie White Lies.
9.
In 1914, when Merle Oberon was 3, Arthur Thompson joined the British Army and later died of pneumonia on the Western Front during the Battle of the Somme.
10.
Merle Oberon attended La Martiniere Calcutta for Girls, one of the best private schools in Calcutta, as a charity student.
11.
Merle Oberon was completely enamored with films and enjoyed going out to nightclubs.
12.
Indian journalist Sunanda K Datta-Ray said that Merle worked as a telephone operator in Calcutta under the name Queenie Thomson, and won a contest at Firpo's Restaurant there, before the outset of her film career.
13.
In Firpo's in 1929, Merle met a former actor, Colonel Ben Finney, and dated him; however, when he saw Charlotte one night at her flat, he realized Oberon was of mixed ancestry and ended the relationship.
14.
Merle Oberon arrived in England for the first time in 1928, aged 17.
15.
Merle Oberon worked as a club hostess under the name Queenie O'Brien and played in minor and unbilled roles in various films.
16.
Merle Oberon then made two more films for Korda: The Private Life of Don Juan with Douglas Fairbanks was a disappointment but The Scarlet Pimpernel with Leslie Howard, who became her lover for a while, was a huge hit.
17.
Merle Oberon's career benefited from her relationship with, and later marriage to, Korda.
18.
Merle Oberon sold "shares" of her contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn and she moved to Hollywood.
19.
The latter co starred David Niven with whom Merle Oberon had a serious romance, and according to one biographer even wanted to marry him, but he was not faithful to her.
20.
Merle Oberon was selected to star in Korda's 1937 film, I, Claudius, as Messalina, but her injuries in a car crash resulted in the film being abandoned.
21.
Back in Hollywood, Merle Oberon appeared opposite Gary Cooper in The Cowboy and the Lady and then played Cathy in the highly acclaimed film Wuthering Heights.
22.
In England Merle Oberon made Over the Moon and The Lion Has Wings for Korda.
23.
Merle Oberon starred in Til We Meet Again and Affectionately Yours for Warner Bros, then That Uncertain Feeling for Ernst Lubitsch.
24.
Merle Oberon was one of many stars to make cameos in Forever and a Day and Stage Door Canteen.
25.
Merle Oberon made First Comes Courage at Columbia and played the female lead in The Lodger, a popular noir.
26.
Merle Oberon had a bit hit with A Song to Remember in which she played George Sand.
27.
Merle Oberon made some films for RKO, Night Song, and Berlin Express.
28.
In France, Merle Oberon appeared in Pardon My French then she did 24 Hours of a Woman's Life in England and All Is Possible in Granada.
29.
Merle Oberon had the lead in a noir, The Price of Fear.
30.
Merle Oberon came out of retirement sporadically to appear in films such as Of Love and Desire and Hotel.
31.
In 1949, Merle Oberon commissioned paintings of Charlotte based on an old photograph, which hung in all her homes until Merle Oberon's own death in 1979.
32.
Merle Oberon later wrote the best-selling autobiography, The Last Enemy.
33.
Merle Oberon had an on-again, off-again affair with actor John Wayne from 1938 to 1947.
34.
Merle Oberon became Lady Korda when her husband was knighted in 1942 by George VI for his contribution to the war effort.
35.
Merle Oberon divorced him in 1945 to marry cinematographer Lucien Ballard.
36.
Merle Oberon married Italian-born industrialist Bruno Pagliai in 1957, adopted two children with him and lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.
37.
In 1973, Merle Oberon met then 36-year-old Dutch actor Robert Wolders while they filmed Interval.
38.
Merle Oberon divorced Pagliai and married Wolders, who was 25 years her junior, in 1975.
39.
Merle Oberon is known to have been to Australia only twice.
40.
Merle Oberon's first visit was in 1965, on a film promotion.
41.
Shortly after arriving at the reception, Merle Oberon, to the disappointment of many, denied she had been born in Tasmania.
42.
Merle Oberon then excused herself claiming illness, and was unavailable to answer questions about her background.
43.
Merle Oberon retired after Interval and moved with Wolders to Malibu, California, where she died in 1979, aged 68, after suffering a stroke.
44.
Merle Oberon's body was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.