Coordinates	33°55′31″N18°25′26″N
Name	Merle Oberon
Caption	in the film Affectionately Yours (1941)
Birth name	Estelle Merle Thompson
Birth date	February 18, 1911
Birth place	Bombay (now Mumbai), British India
Death date	November 23, 1979
Death place	Malibu, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1928–1973
Spouse	Alexander Korda (m. 1939-1945) (divorced)Lucien Ballard (m. 1945-1949) (divorced)Bruno Pagliai (m. 1957-1973) (divorced) 2 adopted childrenRobert Wolders (m. 1975-1979) (her death)}}

Merle Oberon (18 or 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was an Indian-born British actress.

She began her film career in British films, and a prominent role, as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), brought her attention. Leading roles in such films as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) advanced her career, and she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935). A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she soon followed this with her most renowned role, as "Cathy" in Wuthering Heights (1939). Her career continued until the end of the 1940s when it declined and her acting performances over the following years were relatively few.

Early life

According to her birth certificate, Oberon was born in Bombay, British India on 18 February 1911 as Estelle Merle Thompson, Merle was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911.

She obscured her parentage over the years. Some sources claim Merle's parents as Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Māori heritage, and Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington, who worked in Indian Railways. Aged 14, Charlotte had given birth to her first child Constance, in Ceylon, from a relationship with Henry Alfred Selby, an Irish foreman of a tea planter. Charlotte's partner, Arthur Thompson, was listed as her father in Merle's birth certificate, with the forename misspelled as "Arther". Merle, with her "mother" (really her grandmother), led an impoverished existence in shabby Bombay flats for a few years. Then, in 1917, they moved to better circumstances in Calcutta. Oberon received a foundation scholarship to attend La Martiniere Calcutta for Girls, a well-known Calcutta private school.

Oberon first performed with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society. She was also completely enamored of the films and enjoyed going out to nightclubs. Indian journalist Sunanda K. Datta-Ray claimed that Merle worked as a telephone operator in Calcutta under the name Queenie Thomson, and won a contest at Firpo's Restaurant there, before her movie career started.

In 1929, she met a former actor named Colonel Ben Finney at Firpo's, and dated him. However, when he saw Oberon's dark-skinned mother one night at her flat and realised Oberon was mixed-race, he decided to end the relationship. He had left a good word for Oberon with Ingram at the studios in Nice.

Film career

Oberon arrived in England for the first time in 1928, aged 17. Initially she worked as a club hostess under the name Queenie O'Brien and played in minor and unbilled roles in various films. "I couldn't dance or sing or write or paint. The only possible opening seemed to be in some line in which I could use my face. This was, in fact, no better than a hundred other faces, but it did possess a fortunately photogenic quality", she modestly told a journalist at Film Weekly in 1939.

Her film career received a major boost when the director Alexander Korda took an interest and gave her a small but prominent role, under the name Merle Oberon, as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) opposite Charles Laughton. The film became a major success and she was then given leading roles, such as Lady Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, who became her lover for a while.

Oberon's career went on to greater heights, partly as a result of her relationship with and later marriage to Alexander Korda, who had persuaded her to take the name under which she became famous. He sold "shares" of her contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn, who gave her good vehicles in Hollywood. Her "mother" stayed behind in England. Oberon earned her sole Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for The Dark Angel (1935) produced by Goldwyn. Around this time she had a serious romance with David Niven, and according to his authorized biography, even wanted to marry him, but he wasn't faithful to her.

She was selected to star in Korda's film I, Claudius (1937) as Messalina, but a serious car accident resulted in filming being abandoned. Oberon was scarred for life, but skilled lighting technicians were able to hide her injuries from cinema audiences. She went on to appear as Cathy in her most famous film, Wuthering Heights (opposite Laurence Olivier; 1939), as George Sand in A Song to Remember (1945) and as the Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954).

According to Princess Merle, the biography written by Charles Higham with Roy Moseley, Oberon suffered even further damage to her complexion in 1940 from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs. Alexander Korda sent her to a skin specialist in New York City, where she underwent several dermabrasion procedures. The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, one could see noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin. The paintings hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.

She married twice more, to Italian-born industrialist, Bruno Pagliai (with whom she adopted two children; they lived in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico) and Dutch actor Robert Wolders – later companion to actresses Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron, before her retirement in Malibu, California, where she died, aged 68, after suffering a stroke. She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Merle Oberon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard.

Michael Korda, nephew of Alexander Korda, wrote a roman à clef about Oberon after her death entitled Queenie. This was also turned into a television miniseries starring Mia Sara.

Disputed birthplace

Oberon claimed that she was born and raised in Tasmania, Australia. The fact that no birth or school records could be found to prove this was explained by another fabrication: all records had been destroyed in a fire. She maintained these fictions throughout her professional life. The story of her alleged Tasmanian connections was comprehensively debunked after her death.

Oberon is known to have been to Australia only twice. Her first visit was in 1965, on a film promotion. Although a visit to Hobart was scheduled, she became ill after journalists in Sydney pressed her for details of her early life, and she left for Mexico shortly afterwards. Lottie Chintock had been seduced by the owner of the St Helens Hotel, John Wills Thompson.

Lottie Chintock gave birth to her in Hobart but was forced to relinquish her.

In Hobart, Lottie lived with an Indian silk merchant with the unlikely name of O'Brien. The O'Briens adopted the baby and took her to India, where she grew up.

She was taken to India by a travelling troupe of actors called O'Brien.

She was taken to India by the cousin of her mother's employer.

It is claimed that she attended the Model School in Hobart, but that school has no record of her.

Filmography

Features

The Three Passions (1928)

A Warm Corner (1930)

Alf's Button (1930)

Never Trouble Trouble (1931)

The W Plan (1931)

Fascination (1931)

For the Love of Mike (1932)

Reserved for Ladies (1932)

Ebb Tide (1932)

Aren't We All? (1932)

Wedding Rehearsal (1932)

Men of Tomorrow (1932)

Strange Evidence (1933)

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

The Battle (1934)

The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

The Broken Melody (1934)

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

Folies Bergère de Paris (1935)

The Dark Angel (1935)

These Three (1936)

Beloved Enemy (1936)

I, Claudius (1937) (unfinished)

The Divorce of Lady X (1938)

The Cowboy and the Lady (1938)

Wuthering Heights (1939)

The Four Feathers (1939)

Over the Moon (1939)

The Lion Has Wings (1939)

'Til We Meet Again (1940)

That Uncertain Feeling (1941)

Affectionately Yours (1941)

Lydia (1941)

Forever and a Day (1943)

Stage Door Canteen (1943)

First Comes Courage (1943)

The Lodger (1944)

Dark Waters (1944)

A Song to Remember (1945)

This Love of Ours (1945)

A Night in Paradise (1946)

Temptation (1946)

Night Song (1948)

Berlin Express (1948)

24 Hours of a Woman's Life (1952)

Pardon My French (1952) (French version was also filmed)

All Is Possible in Granada (1954)

Desirée (1954)

Deep in My Heart (1954)

The Price of Fear (1956)

Of Love and Desire (1963)

The Oscar (1966)

Hotel (1967)

Interval (1973)

Short Subjects

Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 4 (1936)

Hollywood Goes to Town (1938)

Footnotes

References

The Hindu

"The Trouble With Merle" (Australian documentary) - investigation of her origins.

Casey, Bob. "Merle Oberon: Face of Mystery." (2008)

External links

"Hollywood's first Indian actress: Merle Oberon", SAPNA Magazine, Winter 2009

"The Trouble With Merle" (Australian documentary) — investigation of Oberon's parentage

Classic Movie Favorites website

Photographs of Merle Oberon and bibliography

Vanity Fair portrait">Merle Oberon in pose for The Dark Angel in Vanity Fair portrait by Cecil Beaton

Category:American film actors Category:British film actors Category:People from Mumbai Category:People from Maharashtra Category:British immigrants to the United States Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from the Greater Los Angeles Area Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:Anglo-Indian people Category:1911 births Category:1979 deaths Category:American actors of English descent

Coordinates	33°55′31″N18°25′26″N
Bgcolour	silver
Name	Miklós Rózsa
Birth name	Miklós Rózsa
Birth date	April 18, 1907
Birth place	Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)
Death date	July 27, 1995
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	composer, orchestrator, conductor
Years active	1918–1989
Spouse	Margaret Finlason (1943-1995) (his death)
Website	Miklos Rozsa Society
Children	Juliet Rozsa, Nicolas Rozsa
Grandchildren	Maria Pietralunga, Ariana Battaglino, Nicola Battaglino

Miklós Rózsa () or Miklos Rozsa (18 April 190727 July 1995) was a Hungarian-born composer and conductor, best known for his numerous film scores. Along with such composers as Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman, Rózsa is considered to be one of the "founding fathers of film music.

Rózsa was one of the most respected and popular composers working in Hollywood. He is also regarded today as one of the greatest film score composers of all time. In a career that spanned over fifty years, he composed music for nearly 100 films, including Spellbound (1945), Quo Vadis (1951), Ben-Hur (1959), and King of Kings (1961).

In addition to three Oscars and 16 nominations, Rózsa remains one of the most nominated composers in Oscar history. He also received — but did not win — three Golden Globe nominations as well as an Grammy Award nomination for the MGM Records album of Ben-Hur..

Early life

Miklós Rózsa was born in Budapest and was introduced to classical and folk music by his mother, a classical pianist who had studied with pupils of Franz Liszt, and his father, a well-to-do industrialist and landowner who loved Hungarian folk music. He began to study the violin at age 5 and later the viola and piano. By age 8 he was performing in public and composing. He also collected folksongs from the area where his family had a country estate north of Budapest in an area inhabited by the Palóc Hungarians.

Rózsa, who did not enjoy life in Budapest, moved to Leipzig, ostensibly to study chemistry. However, with a career as a composer in mind he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied composition with Hermann Grabner, a former student of Max Reger.

Rózsa's first two published works, String Trio, Op. 1, and the Piano Quintet, Op. 2, were published in Leipzig. In 1929 he received his diplomas cum laude. For a time he remained in Leipzig as Grabner's assistant, but at the suggestion of the French organist and composer Marcel Dupré, he moved to Paris in 1932.

In Paris, Rózsa composed classical music, including his Hungarian Serenade for small orchestra, Op. 10 (later revised and renumbered as Op. 25) and the Theme, Variations, and Finale, Op. 13, which was especially well received and was performed by conductors such as Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, Eugene Ormandy, and Leonard Bernstein.

Film Scoring Career

Rózsa was introduced to film music in 1934 by his friend, the Swiss-born composer Arthur Honegger. Following a concert which featured their respective compositions, Honegger mentioned that he supplemented his income as a composer of film scores, including Les Misérables. Rózsa went to see it and was greatly impressed by the opportunities the motion picture medium offered.

However, it was not until Rózsa moved to London that he was hired to compose his first film score, that for the picture Knight Without Armour, produced by his fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda. After his next score, for Thunder in the City, he joined the staff of Korda's London Films.

In 1939 Rózsa travelled with Korda to Hollywood to complete the work on The Thief of Bagdad. The film earned him his first Academy Award nomination. A further two followed in 1940 for his scores to Lydia and Sundown. In 1943 he received his fourth nomination for Korda's Jungle Book.

In 1944, Rózsa scored Double Indemnity, the first of several collaborations with acclaimed director Billy Wilder. This score, and that for Woman of the Town, earned him Academy Award nominations in the same year. The Oscar, however, was won by Max Steiner for Since You Went Away.

In 1945 Rózsa was hired to compose the score for Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound, after Bernard Herrmann became unavailable due to other commitments. The score, notable for pioneering the use of the theremin, was immensely successful and earned him his first Oscar. Two of his other scores, The Lost Weekend and A Song to Remember, which were also nominated that year. However, Hitchcock disliked the score, saying it "got in the way of his direction". Rózsa, who also reportedly hated the interruptions and interference by producer David O Selznick, never worked for either Hitchcock or Selznick again.

Rózsa earned another Oscar nomination for scoring The Killers (1946). He received his second Oscar the following year for A Double Life.

Madame Bovary (1949) was Rózsa's first score for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which produced most of the future films that he scored. Other popular scores that he composed for MGM pictures include Quo Vadis? (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), Ben-Hur, King of Kings and The V.I.P.s. For Ben-Hur he received his third and final Oscar. His final two nominations (one each for Best Original Score and Best Original Song) were for the Samuel Bronston film El Cid.

In 1968 Rózsa was asked to score The Green Berets, after Elmer Bernstein turned it down due to his political beliefs. Rózsa initially declined the offer, saying, "I don't do westerns." However, he agreed to compose the score after being informed, "It's not a Western, it's an 'Eastern'." He produced a strong and varied score, which included a night club vocal by a Vietnamese singer Bạch Yến. However, one cue which incorporated stanzas of "Onward Christian Soldiers" was deleted from the final edit of the film.

Last work

Rozsa's last film score was for Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982). The film is also notable for being the final project of famed costume designer Edith Head. Although Rozsa's career as a composer for films ended following a stroke he suffered whilst on holiday in Italy later that year, he continued to compose various concert pieces thereafter. He returned to California at the behest of his son, and remained sequestered at his home for the remainder of his life.

Rozsa died on 27 July 1995 and is buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.

Notable film scores

Knight Without Armour (1937) - Rózsa's first film

The Four Feathers (1939)

The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

Jacaré (1942)

Jungle Book (1942)

Sahara (1943)

Double Indemnity (1944)

The Man in Half Moon Street (1945)

Spellbound (1945)

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Blood on the Sun (1945)

The Killers (1946)

A Double Life (1947)

Brute Force (1947)

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)

Madame Bovary (1949)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Quo Vadis? (1951)

Ivanhoe (1952)

Julius Caesar (1953)

Knights of the Round Table (1953)

Green Fire (1954)

Lust for Life (1956)

Ben-Hur (1959)

King of Kings (1961)

El Cid (1961)

Sodom and Gomorrah (1963)

The Power (1968)

The Green Berets (1968)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)

Providence (1977)

Last Embrace (1979)

Time After Time (1979)

Eye of the Needle (1981)

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) - Rózsa's last film

Concert works

Rózsa's best known concert work is the orchestral Theme, Variations and Finale, Op. 13, which was on the program when Leonard Bernstein made his conducting debut.

Rózsa's Violin Concerto, Op. 24, was composed in 1953-54 for the violinist Jascha Heifetz, who collaborated with the composer in fine-tuning it. The work evokes the passion of native Hungarian music. Rózsa later adapted portions of this work for the score of Billy Wilder's 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, the plot of which, Wilder has said, was inspired by Rózsa's concerto.

Rózsa's Cello Concerto, Op. 32 was written much later (1967–68) at the request of the cellist János Starker, who premiered the work in Berlin in 1969.

Between his violin and cello concertos, Rózsa composed his Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 29, for violin, cello, and orchestra. The commissioning artists, Heifetz and his frequent collaborator Gregor Piatigorsky, never performed the finished work, although they did record a reduced version of the slow movement, called Tema con Variazoni, Op. 29a.

Rózsa also received recognition for his choral works. His collaboration with conductor Maurice Skones and The Choir of the West at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, resulted in a commercial recording of his sacred choral works — To Everything There is a Season, Op. 20; The Vanities of Life, Op. 30; and The Twenty-Third Psalm, Op. 34 — produced by John Steven Lasher and recorded by Allen Giles for the Entr'acte Recording Society in 1978.

The following works for orchestra, solo instruments with orchestra, and concert versions of film scores are as listed by the Miklós Rózsa Society website:

Works for orchestra

Symphony in 3 Movements, Op. 6a (1930/1993)

Theme, Variations & Finale, Op. 13 (1933)

Theme, Variations & Finale, Op. 13a (Revised version) (1966)

Three Hungarian Sketches, Op. 14 (1938)

Three Hungarian Sketches, Op. 14a (Revised version) (1958)

Concerto for String Orchestra, Op. 17 (1943)

Kaleidoscope, 6 short pieces for Small Orchestra, Op. 19a. (1946)

Andante for String Orchestra, Op. 22a

The Vintner's Daughter, 12 Variations on a French folksong, Op. 23a (1952)

Hungarian Serenade, Op. 25 (1945)

Overture to a Symphony Concert, Op. 26a (1963)

Notturno Ungherese, Op. 28 (1964)

Tripartita per Orchestra, Op. 33 (1972)

Festive Flourish (1975)

Works for solo instrument with orchestra

Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song, Op. 4 (1929) for Violin and Orchestra

North Hungarian Peasant Songs and Dances, Op. 5 (1929) for Violin and Orchestra

Violin Concerto, Op. 24 (1953–54)

Sinfonia Concertante, Op. 29 (1966) for Violin and Cello and Orchestra

Tema con Variazoni, Op. 29a (1966) for Violin, Cello and Orchestra

Piano Concerto, Op. 31 (1967)

Cello Concerto, Op. 32 (1971)

Viola Concerto, Op. 37 (1982)

Concert versions of film scores

The Thief of Bagdad Suite (1940)

Lady Hamilton Love Theme (1941)

Lydia: Love Theme and Waltz (1941)

Jungle Book Suite for narrator and orchestra (1942)

Lullaby (from The Jungle Book Suite) (1942) for four-part mixed chorus, a cappella

Spellbound Concerto for piano and orchestra (1946)

Spellbound Concerto (orchestral version) (1946)

The Red House Suite (1947)

Mark Hellinger Suite (1948)

The Madame Bovary Waltz (1949)

Quo Vadis Suite (1951)

Lust for Life Suite (1956)

Ben-Hur Suite (1959)

El Cid Suite (1963)

New England Concerto for two pianos and orchestra (1984) (Themes from Lydia and Time Out of Mind)

Works for solo instruments

Sonata for two Violins, Op. 15a (1930)

Sonatina for Clarinet Solo, Op. 27 (1957)

Toccata capricciosa for Cello Solo, Op. 36 (1977, dedicated to the memory of Gregor Piatigorsky and premiered by Jeffrey Solow)

Sonata for Flute Solo, Op. 39 (1983)

Sonata for Violin Solo, Op. 40 (1985)

Sonata for Clarinet Solo, Op. 41 (1986, premiered 1987 by Gervase de Peyer)

Sonata for Guitar, Op. 42 (1986)

Introduction and Allegro for viola solo, Op. 44 (1988)

Literature

Miklos Rozsa: "Quo Vadis?" Film Music Notes, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1951)

Miklós Rózsa: Double Life: The Autobiography of Miklós Rózsa, Composer in the Golden Years of Hollywood, Seven Hills Books (1989) - ISBN 0859362094

Miklós Rózsa: Double Life: The Autobiography of Miklós Rózsa, Composer in the Golden Years of Hollywood, The Baton Press (1984) - ISBN 0-85936-141-1 (Softcover edition)

Miklós Rózsa: Életem történeteiből (Discussions with János Sebestyén, edited by György Lehotay-Horváth). Zeneműkiadó, Budapest (1980) - ISBN 963 330 354 0

Christopher Palmer: Miklós Rózsa. A Sketch Of His Life And Work. With a foreword by Eugene Ormandy. Breitkopf

& Härtel, London, Wiesbaden (1975)

Miklós Rózsa and Miklós Rózsa on Film Music in Tony Thomas: Film Score. The Art & Craft of Movie Music, Riverwood Press (1991) - ISBN 1-880756-01-3, p. 18-32

Miklós Rózsa in William Darby und Jack Du Bois: American Film Music. Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915 - 1990. McFarland (1990) - ISBN 0-7864-0753-0 - p. 307-344

Miklós Rózsa in Christopher Palmer: The Composer In Hollywood. Marion Boyars (1993) - ISBN 0-7145-2950-8 - p. 186-233

From 1950 to the Present in Roy M. Prendergast: Film Music. A Neglected Art. A Critical Study of Music in Films. Second Edition. Norton (1992) - ISBN 0-393-30874-x - p. 98-179 (in this chapter, the author analyzes Rózsa's score from Quo Vadis (1951 film) (p. 126-130), on a few pages more, he also discusses Julius Caesar (1953 film) and King of Kings),'' a couple of other film works by Miklós Rózsa are merely mentioned)

Jeffrey Dane: "A Composer's Notes: Remembering Miklós Rózsa", iUniverse (2006) - ISBN 0595414338

References

External links

The Miklós Rózsa Society website

David Raksin Remembers His Colleagues: Miklós Rózsa

Miklós Rózsa's Filmo/Discography at SoundtrackCollector.com

Miklós Rózsa at Soundtrackguide.net

Centennial Tribute to Miklos Rózsa

Italian Website at Tribute Site

Vertlieb's Views: Miklos Rosza

Guide to The Miklós Rózsa Papers at Syracuse University

Article in french about Miklos Rosza

Category:1907 births Category:1995 deaths Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Hungarian film score composers Category:Hungarian composers Category:People from Budapest Category:MGM Records artists Category:Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre alumni