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| Merle Oberon was born in Bombay. The late 1930s catapulted Oberon to the so-called big league, Sen says. Her inner circle included figures like music composer Cole Porter and playwright Noël Coward. (Photo by= Getty Images) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] Merle Oberon, a Hollywood star of the black and white era, is a forgotten icon in India, the country of her birth. Best-known for playing the lead in the classic Wuthering Heights, Oberon was an Anglo-Indian born in Bombay in 1911. But as a star in Hollywood's Golden Age, she kept her background a secret - passing herself off as white - throughout her life.
Mayukh Sen, a US-based writer and academic, first stumbled across her name in 2009 when he found out that Oberon was the first actor of South Asian origin to be nominated for an Oscar. She was born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1911. Her mother was part-Sinhalese and part-Maori while her father was British. A 2014 documentary called The Trouble with Merle later found that Selby was, in fact, Oberon's grandmother. Selby's daughter Constance had Oberon as a teenager but the two were reportedly raised together as sisters for some years.
Oberon was passed off as an upper-class girl from Hobart who moved to India after her father died in a hunting accident, Delofski said. She even acknowledged Tasmania as her hometown but rarely mentioned Calcutta. As she bagged more Hollywood films, Oberon moved to the US and in 1935 was nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Dark Angel.
