This is a tribute to the incredible Old Hollywood actress Merle Oberon. The music is "Dream Girl of Theta Delta Chi" by Will Osborne and His Orchestra. A little more about Merle (taken from TCM.com): Merle Oberon was born Estelle Marie Thompson on Feb. 19, 1911. When Oberon's star was on the rise, she claimed be a native of Tasmania, who just grew up in India. However, she was actually born in Mumbai to Constance Selby, a Eurasian girl who was only 15 years old at the time, and British engineer Arthur Thompson. Selby's mother, Charlotte, raised Oberon and pretended to be her birth mother in later years, when in actuality, she was the child's grandmother. At some point, Oberon was known under the name Queenie Thompson and began to act on stage as part of a Calcutta drama society. An actor who had a romantic interest in her suggested that she move to France, where he promised to recommend Oberon to director Rex Ingram, who ended up giving the teenager a small part in his film, "The Three Passions" (1929). Oberon - accompanied by her grandmother, whom she passed off as a maid - then travelled to England and was featured in several other movies over the next few years, but her roles were mostly unremarkable and uncredited. That anonymity finally changed when she caught the eye of producer-director Alexander Korda, who put Oberon under contract with his new company and cast her in his historical biopic "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933). In "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1934), Oberon displayed fine chemistry with Leslie Howard and made the most of a somewhat limiting role as heroine Lady Blakeney. Their connection extended off-screen and prompted Howard to have an affair with Oberon, cheating on his wife of almost 20 years. Her strong performance as the romantic interest of Fredric March and Herbert Marshall in "The Dark Angel" (1936) earned Oberon a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. However, her follow-up project was a far less happy experience. During the shooting of "I, Claudius" (1937), Oberon was involved in a car accident from which she sustained some facial scars. Surgeons were unable to correct the damage Oberon sustained, but careful lighting and make-up application sufficiently masked the flaws and she soon returned to the screen in her first Technicolor production, "The Divorce of Lady X" (1938). Oberon returned to England for her most famous screen assignment as Cathy Earnshaw in William Wyler's lush adaptation of Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" (1939) - the most beloved film adaptation of the tragic novel. The pettiness and pointless bad behavior that ensued from Laurence Olivier, fortunately, did not come across in the leads' performances. Oberon married Korda in 1939 and she soon concentrated her efforts on unremarkable features like "'Til We Meet Again" (1940). Although cameramen had effectively compensated for Oberon's scars in previous films, cinematographer Lucien Ballard and his expert lighting placement - which included a light actually attached to the camera, later known as an "Obie" - made her face look especially luminous. The pair fell in love during production and married the next year, following Oberon's divorce from mentor Korda. However, Oberon's new relationship coincided with a gradual fading in her popularity, which was not helped by middling fare like the melodramatic Chopin biopic "A Song to Remember" (1945). Her marriage to Ballard ended in 1949 and Oberon tried to revitalize her career by heading to France for the little seen farce "Pardon My French" (1951). None of those pictures did much to raise her profile, but Oberon managed a notable return to Hollywood with a moving supporting turn as Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954). However, offers again became scarce and she accepted an unusual outing as host of "Assignment Foreign Legion" (CBS, 1956-57), a British dramatic television series featuring guest players like Christopher Lee, Lionel Jeffries, and Anton Diffring. During that time, she wed her third husband, Bruno Pagliai, and the couple had two children. After an absence of six years, Oberon had her final film appearance in the drama "Interval" (1973), the story of an aging, but still lovely woman who falls for a young artist (Robert Wolders), the thoroughly minor, little-seen production turned out to be somewhat prophetic as Oberon proceeded to divorce Pagliai and wed Wolders, then almost 25 years her junior. Oberon settled into retirement thereafter and in 1978, she and Wolders journeyed to Tasmania for what was described as a welcome home reception. However, while attending a function held in her honor, Oberon denied having been born in the country. A year later, she died of a stroke on Nov. 23, 1979. Follow me on Instagram for short, fun vintage inspiration: https://www.instagram.com/vintage.golden.age/ No copyright infringement intended.

• published: 25 Aug 2023
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