Merle Oberon – The Hollywood Star Who Hid Her True Origins
- Daniel Holland
- Aug 13
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 14
“Look at that face – it’s worth a million pounds.”
When Hungarian filmmaker Alexander Korda uttered those words in the early 1930s, he wasn’t just talking about beauty. He was talking about marketability, mystery, and the delicate game of reinvention that was Hollywood in its golden age.
Merle Oberon was the only Asian actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, this fact remained unchanged until Michelle Yeoh was nominated for (and won) the Best Actress Oscar in 2023 for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
That win made her the first Asian woman to actually take home the award, ending the gap that had existed since Merle Oberon’s nomination in 1936. Despite her successes in Hollywood, Merle spent her entire career denying her heritage, constructing a life story that was as carefully lit and edited as any of her films. Born in Bombay, India, in 1911, she would claim Tasmania as her birthplace and Caucasian parents as her lineage. The truth, which only emerged after her death, was a story shaped by colonialism, prejudice, and the personal cost of surviving an industry that had no place for women who looked like her.
A Birth Hidden in Colonial Shadows
Merle Oberon entered the world as Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson, in British-ruled India. She was the product of violence, her part-Sinhalese, part-Maori mother Constance had been raped by a British officer. The truth was covered up in a way that was tragically common for mixed-race children in colonial India. Her grandmother, Charlotte, herself of Anglo-Indian descent, took the baby in and raised her as her own, passing Constance off as Merle’s older sister.
Charlotte’s motives were complex. She was known to resent Constance, who had been a burden since birth, and perhaps saw in Merle both an opportunity and a chance to erase a shameful family scandal. The household was steeped in secrecy – one that Constance would never escape. Estranged from the family, she died without reconciliation, while Merle and Charlotte remained together for the rest of their lives.
Colourism, Nightclubs, and Skin Bleaching
Growing up in Calcutta, Merle’s beauty set her apart – high cheekbones, thick dark hair, and notably pale skin for someone of mixed heritage. That paleness was prized in British colonial society, and Merle learned quickly how powerful it could be.
By her teens, she was a fixture in Calcutta’s nightclubs, perfecting a faux British accent and cultivating an air of mystery. She also began using skin-bleaching creams widely sold in India – products laden with ammoniated mercury. The dangerous practice lightened skin by suppressing melanin production but carried risks of mercury poisoning, including skin damage and neurological harm. For Merle, the bleaching was more than vanity; it was survival in a world where darker skin meant social exclusion and professional dead-ends.
The Reinvention of Merle Oberon
In 1929, Merle and Charlotte left India for the UK, stopping briefly in France. In London, Merle worked as a nightclub hostess and film extra, reportedly charging hundreds of dollars for evenings in her company.
It was Alexander Korda’s wife, Maria, who first spotted Merle’s star potential. Pointing her out to her husband on a film set, she declared, “There she is, you fool!” Korda was looking for an actress to play Anne Boleyn in his upcoming film The Private Life of Henry VIII. Merle, then still Estelle O’Brien Thompson, was persuaded to adopt a new name, Merle Oberon, carefully chosen to obscure her origins.
Korda’s gamble paid off. When he introduced her to United Artists co-founder Joseph Schenck, Schenck was so captivated he whisked her off on a European tour and even proposed marriage. Whether a real romance or a publicity stunt, the affair cemented Merle’s place in Hollywood.
Stardom – and the Whispered Rumours
Merle’s breakout came with The Scarlet Pimpernel, where black-and-white cinematography made her appear even more porcelain-skinned. But not everyone bought the illusion. A critic once noted she had “a tendency to strongly orientalise her appearance by means of facial makeup and the slant of black brows.”
When the Los Angeles Times hinted in 1935 that she was Euro-Asian, Merle dismissed it as a coincidence of eye shape and her time in India. The role that would define her came the same year – The Dark Angel. Playing a devoted fiancée to a blinded WWI soldier, Merle charmed audiences and critics alike, earning her the 1936 Best Actress nomination. No Asian actress has been nominated in that category since.
Wuthering Heights and Hollywood’s Demands
After The Dark Angel, she starred in Wuthering Heights (1939), one of her most enduring roles, though she received no nomination. She also became the face of Max Factor cosmetics, which claimed their products had transformed her from “slightly unreal and exotic” to “beautiful and charming”, a clear reflection of Hollywood’s discomfort with her heritage.
Marriages, Affairs, and the Obie Light
In 1939, she married Korda, though rumours suggested it was more about social status than love. The marriage was short-lived, and Merle’s numerous affairs were an open secret in Hollywood. When cinematographer Lucien Ballard entered her life, she divorced Korda and married him in 1945.
Ballard, concerned about the toll bleaching creams and a car accident had taken on her face, invented the “Obie” light to flatter her on camera, a soft focus technique still used today.
But Merle’s pursuit of perfection was dangerous. Before a screen test for The Constant Nymph, she suffered a severe reaction from combining mercury-laced creams with a sulphur injection, forcing her to undergo three dermabrasion treatments. The studio’s verdict on her screen test was blunt: “Very bad skin condition, practically impossible to photograph.”
Later Life and the Breaking Point
Her third marriage, to industrialist Bruno Pagliai in 1957, took her to Mexico. There she finally abandoned bleaching creams, though she still attributed her darker complexion to “that Acapulco sun.”
During filming of Interval, she met actor Robert Wolders, her final partner. Wolders tried to get her to visit her supposed birthplace in Hobart, Tasmania, and she reluctantly agreed to speak at the town hall. Though celebrated as a local daughter, she confided to the driver en route that she had actually been born in India.
The trip left her physically shaken, suffering migraines and heart problems that persisted until her death in 1979, aged 68.
The Truth Comes Out
It wasn’t until 1985 that Charles Higham’s biography Princess Merle revealed her true origins. That same year, her nephew Michael Korda published Queenie, a fictionalised version of her life later adapted into a TV miniseries.
As writer Mayukh Sen observed, Merle had spent her life “navigating an industry that wasn’t designed to accommodate her and producing such moving work while fighting those battles.”
Sources:
Higham, Charles. Princess Merle: The Romantic Life of Merle Oberon. New York: Coward-McCann, 1983.
Sen, Mayukh. “The Life and Secret of Merle Oberon.” The Criterion Collection, 7 February 2023. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8143-the-life-and-secret-of-merle-oberon
Vieira, Mark A. Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Parish, James Robert. The MGM Stock Company: The Golden Era. Arlington House, 1973.
Harris, Dana. “The Enigmatic Life of Merle Oberon.” Vanity Fair, 25 July 2019. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/07/merle-oberon-hidden-past
McFarlane, Brian. The Encyclopedia of British Film. Manchester University Press, 2013.
Thomas, Bob. “Merle Oberon: From Bombay to Hollywood.” Associated Press Archives, 1979.
British Film Institute. “Merle Oberon.” BFI Screenonline. https://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/482011/index.html
