Trivia of Merle Oberon

 Trivia of Merle Oberon (19 February 1911 - 23 November 1979)

*For most of her life, Oberon protected herself by concealing the truth about her parentage, claiming that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia, and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire.In fact, she was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a Welsh mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Burgher from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). However, according to her birth certificate, Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, Constance Selby. Constance became pregnant as a result of rape by her step-father, Arthur Thompson. To avoid scandal, Charlotte raised Merle as Constance's half-sister. Charlotte had herself given birth to Constance at the age of 14 as the result of rape by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation.

*Oberon arrived in England for the first time in 1928, aged 17. 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 told a journalist at Film Weekly in 1939.Oberon's exotic appearance and quickly hired her to be an extra in a party scene in a film named The Three Passions (1929).

*Her film career received a major boost when 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.It was one of nine Oberon played in Korda's film, another film were : The Wedding Rehearsal (1932) with Roland Young, The Private of Life Don Juan (1934) with Douglas Fairbanks, I Claudius (1937) with Charles Laughton, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, The Divorce of Lady X (1938) with Laurence Olivier, The Lions Has Wings (1939) with Ralph Richardson, Over The Moon (1939) with Rex Harrison, Lydia (1941) with Joseph Cotten.

*Oberon married director Alexander Korda in 1939 and became Lady Korda when her husband was knighted in 1942 by George VI for his contribution to the war effort.While married, she had a brief affair in 1941 with RAF pilot Richard Hillary, actor John Wayne, and finally she divorced Korda in 1945 to marry cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Ballard devised a special camera light for her, to obscure on film her facial scars suffered in the 1937 accident. The light became known as the "Obie".She and Ballard divorced in 1949.

*Her only Oscar nomination was Best Actress in a Leading Role for her perform as Kitty Vane in film The Dark Angel (1935). Actually the leading role originally intended for Leslie Howard, who was having an affair with Merle Oberon at the time. When the affair ended, Howard dropped out of the production and Fredric March replaced him - much to the disgust of director Sidney Franklin, who thought Oberon wouldn't draw audiences without Howard as her co-star.

*Reportedly, during filming Wuthering Heights (1939), Merle Oberon who played leading role was uncomfortable working with Laurence Olivier and David Niven.Laurence Olivier apparently detested her after his lover, Vivien Leigh rejected to play the lead role in Wuthering Heights (1939). While Niven was her ex after their year-long love affair ended in 1936.

*While filming Desiree (1954) along Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons, Merle Oberon as Empress Josephine accidentally spent too much time under a sunlamp and developed a burn on one side of her face. As a result some of her scenes had to be filmed only from one side until the other side had time to heal.