LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Merle Oberon
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The regal and stylish Merle Oberon was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Appearing in over 40 films, she was nominated for Best Actress in The Dark Angel and delivered striking performances in The Scarlet Pimpernel, opposite Leslie Howard, and in Wuthering Heights, opposite Laurence Olivier. Studio publicists said she was born into a wealthy family in Hobart, Tasmania; yet rumor was that the exotic, almond-eyed actress concealed her true past. Using all the elements of an unraveling mystery, this intriguing documentary pursues many stories within the story, looking not only at the controversy surrounding Merle's birthplace and her ethnic origins, but ... at the demands on the actress burdened by the Hollywood myth, as well the inter-relatedness of people's lives affected by the made-up story. Produced by Film Australia. 08DR JSCA 55 min. Home
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If Errol Flynn was the island state's favourite son, Merle Oberon was its treasured daughter. In 1978, the Hobart Town Hall hosted a function attended by well-known local identities to welcome her back. Decades later, Tasmanians proudly recount stories and anecdotes about the hometown girl who blazed her way to Hollywood. Only Oberon wasn't born in Tasmania. She was Anglo-Indian.
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In 1978 Merle Oberon finally returned to Tasmania for a homecoming reception in Hobart hosted by the Lord Mayor and was filmed at that event. Those who met her at the reception were adamant that she was Tasmanian. Most Tasmanians (including the Tasmanian author of this contribution), continue to believe that Oberon was born in the Australian island state . They point out the house where she was born, say who the midwife and doctor were, and name the Tasmanian family as well as the beautiful Chinese-Australian,
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Merle Oberon represents a classical case of the woman whose sheer beauty secured her the kind of attention that eventually brought her into films. Raised in India, she did not come to London until she was 17; she then progressed from cafe hostess (name Queenie O'Brien) to film extra. This in turn led to minor roles in undistinguished British films during 1930–32 (name Estelle Thompson), until she finally caught the eye of the Hungarian-British producer, Alexander Korda.
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Merle Oberon was born in Bombay, of mixed Welsh-Indian parentage, as Estelle "Queenie" Thompson. According to Michael Korda, she "became a feature of Bombay nightlife while still in her early teens and eventually made her way to England as the girlfriend of a wealthy young Englishman." In London she became a star at the Cafe de Paris and the girlfriend of a Black American jazz musician called Hutch.
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According to guests who attended the welcome home reception, Merle Oberon was most definitely Tasmanian. But instead of subscribing to the studio story of Merle’s Tasmanian birth and its fantasy of wealth, class and “whiteness”, the Tasmanians I spoke to were adamant that the film star was the daughter of a Tasmanian woman called Lottie Chintock from the now-disappeared Chinese tin mining community in the north-east of the island.
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Merle Oberon