LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Merle Oberon: Mother
built 640 days ago
Oberon stars as the recent victim of a sea tragedy. While she was in transit to New Orleans aboard a trading boat, a German submarine torpedoed her ship. Leslie Calvin (Oberon) is one of only four survivors, with her father and mother among the victims. After she is rescued and brought to New Orleans, the "delirious nightmare of the open boat" continues to haunt her and threatens to unhinge her sanity. All of this happens before the curtain rises. In the movie's opening scene, a doctor urges her to write to relatives--with hopes of finding someone to take care of her.
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After packing all their belongings and moving to France, Merle and her mother found that their supposed benefactor had dodged them. However, he had left a good word for Merle with Rex Ingram at the studios in Nice. Ingram liked Merle's exotic appearance. She was quickly hired to be an extra in party scene. After a few more bit roles, she moved with her mother to London for better opportunities.
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Her mother died in 1937, and in 1949 Oberon commissioned paintings of her mother from an old photograph, instructing the artist to lighten her mother's complexion. The paintings would hang in all her homes until her death in 1979. Also, Oberon supposedly had a minor obsession with facial injuries after her own accident, and had an affair with Richard Hillary who had been burned after his Supermarine Spitfire was shot down in 1940.
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Mother