The Dark Angel
May 24, 2020 8:00 AM   Subscribe

Merle Oberon’s Remarkable Life. "In 1935, Merle Oberon became the first biracial actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, an incredible achievement in then-segregated Hollywood -- except that nobody in Hollywood knew Oberon was biracial. Born in Bombay into abject poverty in 1911, Oberon's fate seemed sealed in her racist colonial society. But a series of events, lies, men, and an obsession with controlling her own image -- even if it meant bleaching her own skin -- changed Oberon's path forever."

Oberon met and married director Alexander Korda (“Thief of Baghdad”, “The Third Man”) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for the movie, Dark Angel.

Related: Jermyn Street Theatre, a tiny off-West End theatre in London is currently presenting a Zoom-dramatization/reading of the Tony Cox play “The Skin Game”. It is about the real-life love triangle between an injured WWII RAF fighter pilot; a cousin of W.B. Yeats and Merle Oberon. The play is getting some fine reviews.
posted by storybored (5 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
You Must Remember This is a podcast I could listen to for hours on end, and often have.
posted by MinPin at 12:18 PM on May 24, 2020 [1 favorite]


Just watched her in Berlin Express (1948), one of the first films to be shot by Hollywood in postwar Berlin. She's also the namesake of the "Obie", a camera-mounted fill light that was invented by her 2nd husband, cinematographer Lucien Ballard. An accident in 1937 that left with facial scarring, so the fill light washed out the scars. It caught on to wider use since it created expressive specular light reflection on Oberon's eyes.

I'm sure the Make Me Over podcast episode goes over this in much more detail!
posted by JauntyFedora at 9:41 PM on May 24, 2020 [2 favorites]


I first saw her with Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel. She was enchanting.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:30 PM on May 24, 2020


I read a book about her entitled Moon Moth. It was a somewhat fictionalized but mostly accurate book. In the afterword the author explains what she changed for the sake of narrative.

She was very driven to go after what she wanted. I’m not sure I’ve had had the same gumption.
posted by affectionateborg at 6:34 AM on May 25, 2020


One of my favorite Merle Oberon films is the 1944 version of "The Lodger" with the great Laird Cregar.
posted by maurice at 9:15 AM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


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