Sunday, Mar 23, 2025 at 3:30 p.m.
With author Mayukh Sen in person!
A major movie star of the 1930s and 1940s in both Hollywood and the U.K., Merle Oberon was known for her captivating beauty, steely screen presence, and, for many at the time, air of “exoticism.” After breaking through as Anne Boleyn against Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII, Oberon came to the U.S. and quickly conquered with a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the Lillian Hellman–penned love triangle The Dark Angel (nominated alongside such illustrious stars as Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn). Her career peaked with her leading performance against Laurence Olivier in William Wyler’s gorgeous 1939 Best Picture nominee Wuthering Heights, which elegantly captures the brooding gothic romanticism of Emily Brontë’s classic novel.
Yet for all her hard-won success, Oberon was hiding a secret. Though she claimed to have been born in Tanzania, Oberon was an Anglo-Indian woman born and raised in Calcutta. At a moment in history when U.S. restricted immigration from South Asia and when miscegenation was outlawed in many states, including California, Oberon chose to keep her identity concealed, passing as white throughout her many decades in Hollywood. In his revealing and beautifully written new biography, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (W.W. Norton & Company), Mayukh Sen delves into this long untold history, which has too often in the past been couched in rumor and hearsay. Following a screening of Wuthering Heights, Mayukh Sen will sign copies of his book, available to purchase in the Museum shop.
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