Talk:Merle Oberon

message: Charles Hingham has been revealed more than once to be a fabricator if not downright liar for more than four decades. Using one of his "biographies" (other than the one on Katharine Hepburn which was authorized) reflects badly on Wikipedia. I suggest anything attributed to Hingham not backed up by another source (and not one that is drawing on this Wiki article or Hingman) be removed. Montju (talk) 14:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. I've previously made the same observation about Charles Higham. One day when I have time, I might try. Angela Woolacott's book might be a good start.Nickm57 (talk) 07:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title: Parentage section is a badly written mess based primarily on disreputable source

message: WikiProject Biography Assessment
Nearly a B; needs references.
The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 14:09, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Class_parameter|Biography assessment rating]] comment 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 18:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No one has worked to improve this article in quite a while, and there are no citations for such unusual claims as her "obsession" with facial injuries, "cosmetic poisoning," many etramarital affairs, etc. Please, do better by this article. 64.142.90.33 (talk) 16:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: No mention of this widely alleged (and almost certainly true) affair? (See www.throneout.com/images/royal_affairs.pdf) 89.243.106.208 (talk) 09:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No citations for much of anything -- the entire article reads like a tabloid bio! 64.142.90.33 (talk) 16:57, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have the book "Higham, Charles and Moseley, Roy. Princess Merle: The Romantic Life of Merle Oberon" mentioned in the reference section and I had read this book. I think most of the info of the larger two sections are from that book (I didn't edit the article). I'll add the citations later in December (unless it is available from google books too). In between, I'll try to add the above information and anything else I can collect from other sources. Feel free to do the same if you have sources. Thanks. --GDibyendu (talk) 20:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Alleged affair with the Duke of Edinburgh

message: The first line of the article states Miss Oberon's birth name as Estelle Merle Oberon.  Immediately to the right of the article in the infomation box under her picture, it states her birth name as Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson.  Which is it?  Not very encyclopedic, I must say, but typical Wikipedia none-the-less.65.69.81.2 (talk) 20:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone has apparently corrected that. Softlavender (talk) 00:55, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Which is it?

message: I removed the '15-years-old' as it was sounding ridiculous. However, I assume that the intended meaning was probably to say that when 'Merle was born her mother was 15-years-old'. But, I am not adding it back as references which can be checked immediately does not claim that and a citation is surely needed for this piece of info. Thanks. --GDibyendu (talk) 20:37, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  15-years-old mother 

message: How tall was Merle Oberon?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.203.46.33 (talk) 17:43, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: She is said to be 5 foot 2 inches. See a Google search on "Merle Oberon height".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C8D:9C01:E8F5:E5AA:335E:2458 (talk) 09:31, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Height

message: Is it right to call her an Indian actress when she never made films in India?  Other sites/movie directories etc refer to her as a British actress, while also acknowledging her Indian background.   What do you think Jack?  Rossrs (talk) 22:59, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd prefer to call her an Indian-born British actress.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough.  That's more accurate.  Rossrs (talk) 01:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Indian actress

message: There certainly seems to be an aura of fiction regarding Miss Oberon.   See the photograph of her grave here which shows her birth date at 1917, 6 years later than other sources indicate.   I wonder if this means she also fudged her birthdate to her husband, the person most likely to have ordered the grave marker.  What next - she isn't even dead?  Rossrs (talk) 05:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: In 1978 she went so far as to point out Government House in Hobart (the residence of the Governor of Tasmania !!) and tell her husband that that was where she was born and grew up.  If she was prepared to lie to that extent to him, there's no telling what other porkies she told.  But I have a lot of sympathy with her position.  It was very common for actors in those days to fudge their real birthdates.  In her particular case there was the added issue of the stigma of being born in India, of mixed race, out of wedlock, to an unknown father, and she wanted nothing on the record that could even hint that this was the case, so the bigger distraction from the truth, the better.  Ironically, if she was starting out today, she'd probably want the truth to be out there in all its glory, to add an air of oriental mystique to her appeal.  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I have complete empathy for Merle.  She had several reasons to feel embarassed and she shouldn't have been embarassed about any of them.    She was just unlucky that all of the circumstances of her birth were as completely out of her control as the sexist, racist, ageist time in which she lived.   Nowadays, the dramatic backstory would be a selling point.   Rossrs (talk) 06:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Fiction

message: We're saying that her real origins were only made known after her death in 1979.  I have a very clear recollection of talking about her to a friend at work in around 1970 or 1971.  I mentioned that she was Australian, and my friend said "Oh, no she wasn't.  It's generally accepted these days that she was Anglo-Indian".  So there were certainly some doubts being expressed well before she died.  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there were rumours for quite some time.  Exactly how long, I don't know.   I thought that the Higham biography was the first to go on record.   Maybe it needs to be watered down and made a bit vague.  Rossrs (talk) 06:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There might be some info in the latest biography "Merle Oberon: Face of Mystery", which was released in late 2008.  Has anyone read it?  --  JackofOz (talk) 06:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Guess what was on Foxtel tonight at 7.30pm?  (I live in Brisbane). The Trouble With Merle !!!!  I discovered this at precisely 8.28pm.  Foxtel being Foxtel,  it's on again 3 times tomorrow, so I have set my programmer to record it (once).    Face of Mystery certainly seems as though it's largely about her myth so it could be a good one to read.  Rossrs (talk) 13:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: When did the truth come out?

message: When you go to the link about her grave. The gravestone and the website hosting the grave pictures <http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1574> both record her birth year as 1917 and not 1911 as recorded in the Wikipedia article. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon>
I didn't want to change the article as I have no other source with which to dispute this date. I also cannot reconcile issues about later events recorded in Wikipedia. This puts into question the following detail in Wikipedia:
"Some sources claim Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Maori heritage,[4] and Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington, who worked in Indian Railways,[5] as Merle's parents." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon>
If Merle Oberon was born in 1917 and not 1911, the following makes the recorded paternity questionable: "In 1914, when Merle was three, Arthur Thompson died of pneumonia on the Western Front in the early months of World War I." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Oberon>
If Arthur Thompson was the father, he died on a date later than the 1914 date recorded in Wikipedia. If Arthur Thompson died in 1914, it seems extremely unlikely that he was the father of Merle Oberon born in 1917.
I hope this issue is resolved by somebody more qualified than I.
24.19.173.191 (talk) 18:22, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birthdate 

message: During the 1960s, the surviving reels of "I,Claudius" were broadcast on UK TV, hosted by Dirk Bogarde. Several of the original cast were still alive including the late Emlyn Williams. Apparently Merle Oberon walked to hospital after the motoring accident so the injury cannot have been too serious.
The circumstances of the accident never seem to have been revealed so who was driving and what went wrong?AT Kunene (talk) 09:31, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The motoring accident 

message: During the broadcast of "I, Claudius", somebody recalled that the part of Valeria Messalina was played by the "fifteen year old Merle Oberon".
If the reconstructions of her birth date are correct,it is possible that she was older than fifteen at the time and had already fooled a number of people.AT Kunene (talk) 09:50, 23 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition 

message: In a recently published book called "The Birth of the Pill," by Jonathan Eig, he states that at the age of sixteen, Merle Oberon was, on orders of her mother (whoever that was), sterilized surgically.  The ostensible reason was that her mother thought she was too beautiful and wanted to spare her unwanted male attention and possible rape.  Seems flimsy to me, but it's stated as fact.  Apparently the records of Dr. Rock, a gynecologist instrumental in the development of the birth control pill, but at the time running a fertility clinic, show that Merle Oberon came to him so that he could reverse the procedure.  If it did happen, the reversing procedure was successful, as she subsequently had two children.  Can anybody confirm this story?65.81.79.71 (talk) 15:45, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been said that the two children were adopted.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C8D:9C01:E8F5:E5AA:335E:2458 (talk) 09:57, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no reason to suppose that this would have altered her looks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:7C8D:9C01:E8F5:E5AA:335E:2458 (talk) 10:00, 18 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sterilization 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: The article currently says:
:"I couldn't dance or sing or write or paint. The only possible opening seemed to be in some line in which I could use my face. This was, in fact, no better than a hundred other faces, but it did possess a fortunately photogenic quality," she told a journalist at Film Weekly in 1939. In view of the information discovered since this 1939 article (see preceding section) this should be seen as part of a myth perpetrated by Oberon.
Which part of this statement is a myth? I understand that Oberon significantly misrepresented her background, including claiming to have been born in a different country 6,000 miles from where she was actually born, but I don't see anything obviously fictional in the above statement. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:04, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which myth? 

message: Within this article Oberon's mother's age at the time of Oberon's birth is listed as both 12 and 14.  Surely both cannot be true. 64.98.89.245 (talk) 14:11, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth mother age  

message: The story that Merle Oberon had Maori ancestry appears in Charles Higham and Roy Moseley’s 1983 biography, Princess Merle. I noted (above) they make reference to the Maori claim twice, on P17-18 and on P284 but provide no source. In re-reading page 283-4 it seems the origins of the myth may rest with Higham and Modeley's take on comments made by Robert Wolders, Merle’s fourth husband. They cite Wolders account of taking Merle by ship in 1974, on a world cruise, taking in ports in Asia, including tours of sights and temples in Bombay:
"She wanted to find out her mysterious origins and whether she could find the answer in those bland slumbering faces. Neither she nor I could really see her in them. We sailed on to the Indies. It was only when we got to Bali that we saw her likeness in the temples there. At last we felt we knew where she came from."
Higham and Moseley then add their own commentary – a not very accurate take on history plus some wishful thinking:
"It is important to note that the Maoris came from Indonesia in the eighth century, traversing thousands of miles and stopping for repairs in tiny islands before settling in New Zealand. The Maori blood in her mother had at last found its recognition in Merle’s subconscious."
So this might be the origin of the "Maori blood" story. I can find nothing else, anywhere, to support this idea of Merle Oberon having Maori ancestry, except in newspaper reports that repeat it.
 
However, there is a very similar story of the cultural appropriation of Merle Oberon, documented in the 2002 film The Trouble with Merle. The film demonstrates the tenacious Tasmanian belief that Merle Oberon was the daughter of a woman called Lottie Chintock - a belief that exists to this day.
For those interested, Angela Woollacott’s chapter on Merle in "Race and the Modern Exotic" (2011) is also highly recommended. Nickm57 (talk) 23:37, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The origins of the “Maori blood” story 

message: Is there any information on Merle's birth father?  The article states only that she was raised by Arthur Thompson and Charlotte Selby, and her birth mother was Charlotte's daughter Constance.  But who was her father?  Elsquared (talk) 06:31, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Arthur Thompson was her father. I mentioned (in the previous comment above) that the documentary The Trouble With Merle is worth finding and watching. At about the 40 minute mark the documentary features Harry Selby, Merle's half-brother. It shows photos of Charlotte, Constance and briefly, at the 44 minute mark, Estelle Merle Thompson's Bombay birth certificate. Interestingly, that document gives her date of birth as 18 Feb 1911. These documents Selby provided to the ABC filmmaker in 2002, but not to Charles Higham and Roy Moseley in 1983. Nickm57 (talk) 03:06, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks very much for the reply.  I have been searching for the film, but so far only found a site to purchase a download.  (I'd rather have a DVD.)  If Arthur Thompson was her father, that would mean he wasn't Charlotte's father....he married Charlotte, who already had Constance from a previous relationship, right?  That's what got me confused. Elsquared (talk) 07:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merle's father 

message: The section "parentage" says that probably her mother was her grandmother. The section "personal life" does state that as a fact. Both is a little bit contradictory. Maybe someone with more in-depth knowledge can align both paragraphs? Thank you. Glamourqueen (talk) 18:37, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Family situation