Hollywood Icon Merle Oberon’s Mysterious Past Revealed After Decades Of Silence

Legendary actress Merle Oberon was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in 1935’s “The Dark Angel” — a term that perfectly describes how she emerged from her secret, tragic childhood.

Best known for playing the quintessential British heroine Catherine Earnshaw opposite Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in the English literature masterpiece “Wuthering Heights,” Merle was born Estelle Merle Thompson in Mumbai, India, to her teen half-Sinhalese mother, Constance, in 1911.

Merle was conceived as “the result of an assault at the hands of Constance’s stepfather, a white man from Darlington, England,” reveals Mayukh Sen, author of the new biography “Love, Queenie.”

She was raised in near poverty by her maternal grandmother and told that Constance was her half-sister.

Despite the family’s financial situation, Merle earned a scholarship to the private school La Martinière Calcutta, where she set her goal on an acting career—and ran into the strict social caste system of India.

“Many students alienated her because of her mixed-race background,” explains Sen. “Anglo-Indians like Merle occupied a pretty subordinate position within British India.”

At age 17, Merle left India for London. She quickly began landing small parts and she “was often asked to play roles of foreign women—French, Spanish or even Japanese,” says Sen.

But her career would change when she met with director Alexander Korda, who became her first husband. He helped her invent a new past — a fake tale that said she was the daughter of white parents on the Australian island of Tasmania.

That allowed Merle access to Hollywood. In those days, had her real heritage been known, she would have never been a leading lady. The 1930s Hays Code banned interracial romances in films, limiting people of color to background roles.

In addition, immigration to America from India was extremely restricted. Notes Sen, “For her to gain entry into America as anything other than a tourist she would have to pass as white.”

Eventually, says Sen, rumors swirled about Merle’s true heritage, but she stuck to her guns, claiming her birth certificate had been destroyed in a fire.

Her fourth husband, Robert Wolders, suspected she was lying about her past, but remained loyal.

“On a visit to Tasmania, her fictitious birthplace, in 1978, Merle suffered a breakdown, and he began to wonder about the veracity of this alleged backstory,” says Sen. “Even her children had been completely in the dark about it. Only after her death (at 68 in 1979), they learned that she had grown up in poverty in India.”