The First ‘Wuthering Heights’ Movie You Can Watch Now Starred an Actress Who Kept Her Past Hidden for Decades

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Merle Oberon is not a Hollywood name that gets tossed around much anymore. In the 1930s, however, she was one of the biggest box office stars. With her stunning looks and emotionally-charged performances, Oberon starred in a series of screen classics, including an Oscar-nominated performance inThe Dark Angel and a turn as the heroine Cathy in what is perhaps — at least up toEmerald Fennell — the best known version of Wuthering Heights(although others have their preferences).Oberon’s casting in any of her best-known roles, though, would’ve been controversial at the time, had the world known a secret that she harbored from a young age. Oberon was part-Asian. Born in Bombay — which was then part of British India — Oberon’s mother was Burgher, part of a Sri Lankan Eurasian ethnic group.This is only the beginning of a confusing mystery as to what exactly Oberon’s origin truly is. Her early life, in fact, is a cinematic tale befitting of her movie star status.

Oberon Concealed Her True Background for Decades

According to the Asian American Foundation, Oberon spent her life claiming to have been born to white parents in Tasmania, Australia. In an interview, author Mayukh Sen said that her mixed-race background actually subjected Oberon’s family to “abject poverty” and “rejection from both white Britons and other Indians” for “perceived racial impurity.”

“However, upon traveling abroad to the United Kingdom—a place that was a haven for Anglo-Indians who felt alienated in British India during the yawning years of the empire—she could slough off any stigma a little more easily,” Sen explained. Oberon worked hard to conceal the truth of her identity, the author related, because of her difficult childhood and how important it was that she did “nothing to forfeit any security once she obtained it.”

“For Merle, the lie created for her by studio publicists back in 1932—one that involved not only concealment of her racial identity, but also a fictitious birthplace—was so involved that unraveling it herself would have sacrificed that cocoon of safety she’d built for herself. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I just don’t think Merle would have put so much on the line in the final years of her life,” Sen said.

Merle Oberon Stood by Her Likely-Faked Birthplace

So deep did Oberon’s Tasmanian story go that there was a theater named for her in her supposed birthplace of Hobart. She is known to have visited Australia twice, in 1965 and 1978, according to the bookTill Apples Grow on an Orange Tree by Cassandra Pybus.The first time, she strangely fell ill and left the country when a reporter for theSydney Morning Heraldpressed for details about her birth. The second time, she largely stayed in her hotel room and had “crying jags.”

Even her actual mother was a work of fiction.According to The New York Times, Constance Selby gave birth to Oberon — only 14 at the time. Selby had been raped by her stepfather, so her mother, Charlotte Selby, took charge of Oberon, who grew up believing that her mother was her sister.

When she got to Hollywood, obviously, a new reality was created, which had already been set in stone for Oberon. Oddly, unlike many stars, her first name got to stay — though it was really her middle name Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson, which was shifted to Merle Oberon. A slight, but supremely posh alteration.

“I couldn’t dance or sing or write or paint,” she was once quoted as saying. “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 was 17 when she came to England in 1928, and she was eventually discovered by powerhouse British filmmaker Alexander Korda, who bestowed upon her the breakout performance of her career, that of Anne Boleyn in the Charles Laughton-starringThe Private Life of Henry VIII. She married Korda, who would sell her contract to Hollywood’s Samuel Goldwyn.

Here her career really took off, as she shifted between California and England, making movies likeThese Three andThe Cowboy and the Lady, appearing alongside big stars such asDavid NivenandGary Cooper. Her best-remembered performance would be inWilliam Wyler’s version ofWuthering Heights, which was named as one of the 100 best movies ever made by the American Film Institute in 1998. Co-starring with Laurence Oliver, her effervescent performance as Cathy became the one most audiences identified with the seminal, tragic literary character all the way up to Margot Robbie.

Merle Oberon Never Acknowledged the Truth of Her History

In later years, her career would cool off. Her last screen appearance would be in 1973’sInterval, a low-budget drama that also featured her then-husband, Dutch actorRobert Wolders, who was 25 years her junior. She died following a stroke in 1979 at 68 in Malibu, California.Years later, Oberon is now generally considered to be the first Asian nominee in the Best Actress category, a fact that was widely reported after Michelle Yeoh’s historic win in the category for 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. Though she may never have been able to embrace her past, her legacy continues and extends across the decades.Wuthering Heights is available to stream on Prime Video, HBO Max, and Tubi in the U.S.