Actor Merle Oberon hid her South Asian heritage to keep working in Hollywood

The perfect hair, arching eyebrows, and high cheekbones of Hollywood starlets often hid the truth of their ancestry. British actor Merle Oberon, who burst onto the scene in 1935, was one of them. Her ascent was quick. By age 24, her portrayal of a young woman entwined in a sentimental love triangle in “The Dark Angel” earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress.

Although Oberon did not win, decades later she would be acknowledged as a forerunner among South Asian actors.

Oberon held a secret about her origin and fiercely controlled her backstory. Able to charm studios and audiences, she claimed European parentage and a birthplace of Tasmania, a fable concocted by her first husband, British director Alexander Korda. She explained away her complexion as French Irish.

Although American gossip columnists speculated about her hair and skin color, Oberon never publicly revealed she was Estelle Merle “Queenie” Thompson, born in Mumbai and raised in Kolkata, India.

Oberon was so dedicated to preserving her image that when a cameraman invented a special light that flattered her in closeups, she married him. But even Oberon didn’t know such fabrications ran generations deep. She never learned that her half sister was, in fact, her biological mother and that the woman who raised her was her grandmother.

Biographer Mayukh Sen, who previously examined American immigrant women’s lives and culinary skills, uses a compassionate lens in “Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star.” It could be tempting to dismiss Oberon as a self-absorbed, money-driven diva who acquired and shed lovers and husbands like outgrown fashions. But Sen elegantly and thoroughly performs a work of historical recovery for a subject whose uniqueness has never been fully understood or appreciated.

He strives to broaden empathy for Oberon’s choices by describing them as survival strategies. She was endeavoring to leave behind her impoverished beginnings and forge a filmmaking career during a period of anti-Asian immigration policies and antimiscegenation laws. Sen corrects prior inaccurate profiles of her life in important ways, too. 

Although Oberon protected the public story of her origins – even accepting an invitation to visit Tasmania, which wanted to celebrate her as a local legend – Sen reveals how she privately sought to maintain her ties to India.

It is clear that the author, also of South Asian heritage, is personally vested in recognizing Oberon as the first Asian woman nominated for best actress and as an artist with merit. “I want to see her,” Sen writes. “Merle found purchase in a world where our likes were rarely acknowledged.”

And yet it’s not entirely clear if Oberon, who worked desperately to transcend racial characterization her whole life, would want to be rediscovered and classified this way. The author admits this tension as he works, creating a fascinating read. Sometimes, parts of the book feel repetitive, and perhaps only true cinephiles will appreciate this deep dive into Oberon’s extensive filmography, which includes 48 movie credits. 

Sen manages to polish Oberon’s humanity and grace in “Love, Queenie,” even as he spotlights the flaws of an actor who assumed her most convincing role when the cameras weren’t rolling.