Merle Oberon

Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson, 19 February 1911 – 23 November 1979) was an Indian-born British actress. She began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her success in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935). A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she soon followed this with her most renowned performance in Wuthering Heights (1939). 2Early life Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson was born in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), British India on 19 February 1911. Merle was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911. Born in Bombay, India, to a 12-year-old Indian girl, for most of her lifetime Oberon concealed the truth about her parentage. For many years she claimed that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia, and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire. Some sources have claimed that Merle's parents were Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington, who worked in Indian Railways, and Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Māori heritag