Merle arrived in England for the first time in 1928. Initially she worked as a club hostess under the name
Queenie O'Brien and played in minor and unbilled roles in various films. Her film career received a major boost when the director
Alexander Korda took an interest and gave her a small but prominent role, under the name
Merle Oberon, as
Anne Boleyn in
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) opposite
Charles Laughton. The film became a major success and she was then given leading roles, such as the
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with
Leslie Howard, who became her lover for a while. During her time as a film star, Oberon went to great lengths to disguise her mixed-race background and when her dark-skinned mother moved in with her, she masqueraded as Oberon's maid.
Oberon's career went on to greater heights, partly as a result of her relationship with and later marriage to Alexander Korda, who had persuaded her to take the name under which she became famous. He sold "shares" of her contract to producer
Samuel Goldwyn, who gave her good vehicles in
Hollywood. Her mother stayed behind in
England. Oberon received her only
Oscar nomination as Best Actress for
The Dark Angel (1935) produced by Goldwyn. Around this time she had a serious romance with
David Niven, and according to his authorized biography, even wanted to marry him, but he wasn't faithful to her. She was selected to star in Korda's film
I, Claudius (1937) as
Messalina, but a serious car accident resulted in filming being abandoned. Merle Oberon was scarred for life, but skilled lighting technicians were able to hide her injuries from cinema audiences.
She went on to appear as Cathy in her most famous film
Wuthering Heights (1939), as
George Sand in
A Song to Remember (1945), and as
Empress Josephine in
Désirée (1954).
According to
Princess Merle, the biography written by
Charles Higham with Roy Moseley, Merle suffered even further damage to her complexion in 1940 from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to
sulfa drugs. Alexander Korda sent her to a skin specialist in
New York City, where she underwent several
dermabrasion procedures. The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, one could see noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin.
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.
Merle Oberon became Lady Korda upon her husband's knighthood. She divorced Sir Alexander Korda in 1945, to marry
cinematographer Lucien Ballard. Ballard devised a special camera light for her to eliminate her facial scars on film. The light became known as the "Obie".
She married twice more, to Italian-born industrialist, Bruno Pagliai (with whom she adopted 2 children) and Dutch actor
Robert Wolders - who would later become
Audrey Hepburn's companion - before her retirement in
Malibu, California, where she died after suffering a
stroke at the age of 68.
She was interred in the
Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in
Glendale, California.
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6250 Hollywood Boulevard.
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