Love Letters
Loretta Young,
Rex Harrison,
Paula Winslowe
Last of Mrs Cheyney
Joan Fontaine,
Alan Marshal,
Nigel Bruce,
Gerald Mohr
This Love of
Ours
Merle Oberon,
Joseph Cotten,
Sue England,
Elliot Lewis
Merle Oberon (
19 February 1911 -
23 November 1979) was an Anglo-Indian actress.[1] She began her film career in
British films as
Anne Boleyn in The
Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her success in
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she traveled 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 performance in
Wuthering Heights (
1939).
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.[15] In view of the information discovered since this 1939 article (see preceding section) this should be seen as part of a myth perpetrated by Miss Oberon, since apparently she did not reach
Europe until 1929.
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.[citation needed]
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.[citation needed] 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.[16] The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, one could see noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin.[16]
Charlotte died in 1937. In 1949 Oberon commissioned paintings of her mother from an old photograph.[17] The paintings hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.[18]
Merle Oberon 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 good-will tour of the United States. He later became well known as the author of a best-selling book,
The Last Enemy.
Merle Oberon became
Lady Korda upon her husband's knighthood in
1942, when the couple were based at
Hills House in Denham, England. She divorced him in 1945, to marry cinematographer
Lucien Ballard.
Ballard devised a special camera light for her to eliminate her facial scars on film. The light became known as the "
Obie".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon
- published: 04 Dec 2012
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