Merle Oberon

flashback

Exactly fifty years ago Merle Oberon (1911-79) starred as Cathy in Wuthering Heights. It was her Hollywood apogee—by the time Olivier's Heathcliff pleaded, "Haunt me, drive me mad," at her deathbed, there wasn't a dry eye in the house. In fact, she was Cathy, tom between Heathcliff, the brooding gypsy with dirty hands, and the "milk white" glamour of Edgar. Though seemingly a porcelain English lady, she was bom in the slums of Bombay, and the woman she addressed in Hindustani and introduced as her maid was her widowed mother. Oberon (fictionalized as Michael Korda's Queenie) was forced to deny her Eurasian roots to reign in London society and the movies. But she got the last laugh. After a string of famous lovers (including Leslie Howard and David Niven, who was Edgar in Wuthering Heights), she became Lady Alexander Korda, worked for British intelligence, and befriended the royal family. Here, a few months before she went to Hollywood, she bared her pearly Eastern eroticism for Beaton, then went on to make the world her oyster.