Customer Reviews

Princess Merle: The Romantic Life of Merle Oberon

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In his usual, racy tell-all style, Higham has constructed a finely written bio on one of Hollywood's great beauties - Merle Oberon. He tells of her childhood in India, the offspring of an Indian mother and Irish-English father. Light enough to "pass" for white, she left India for England, and the rest is history. We get lots of interesting little tidbits on the British film industry, which Merle, with the help of her Svengali and husband, Alexander Korda, helped to establish. Merle's feuds with Marlene Dietrich and Lawrence Olivier, her Wuthering Heights co-star, are also well-documented. It almost reads like a romantic novel, a woman trying to hide her past, racism, infertility, romantic interludes, and even a stint working for British Intelligence during World War II. Higham waxes poetic about Merle's breathtaking beauty, but supplies far too few photographs to support this fact, though there is an arresting picture of her on the book's cover. Higham poignantly brings to light the stresses and strains of Merle being forced to hide her racial origins in a xenophobic Hollywood.

i was pleased to find this book being a fan of merle's but the book has way to much info on merle's films and lifestyle but not enough info on who this woman was , and the writing got a little to murky at times. the only info about merle that stayed with me was that we share the same favorite meal, me being half indian as well, we both adore oxtail stew!lol

...expectations.

The authors put one on the scene with accurate, but not tawdry details.