When Brown People Pretend to be White

Merle Oberon (1911-1979) was stunning, no doubt about it, but her best performance as an actress was portraying herself as something she wasn't, namely a white woman with no racial "blur". In reality, she, who was born in Bombay, India, was of mixed races as her biological mother was of Sri Lankan (Sinhalese) and Maori descent. Neither the world as such nor the movie industry of that time was set to welcome a major star of mixed racial heritage, so Merle publicly presented herself as a white woman from Tasmania, thus hiding her true background throughout her quite fine career. 

Not only was she of mixed races, but her parents held more secrets than just not being white. For instance, her biological father may have been the Welsh engineer who worked in Indian Railways, Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, who raised her with his wife, Charlotte Selby, whose full name was Constance Charlotte Thompson. Very young, just 14 years old, she had been raped by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation. Something which led to the birth of her daughter, Constance Joyce Selby.

However, according to Merle's birth certificate, the name of her biological mother was "Constance Thompson" which may refer to either "Constance Charlotte Selby" or "Constance Joyce Selby". It has been suggested that Arthur Terrence O'BrienThompson raped his teenage stepdaughter, Constance Joyce Selby, impregnating her with a daughter, namely Merle, and that he and his wife raised the child as their own, thus turning the baby into a half-sister of her very young and abused mother. This suggestion has been denied by all of them, but it may be true.

As Merle had to hide her heritage because of the bigotry and racial prejudices at the time, she couldn't reveal yet another secret in her family life: Her Singhalese "maid", Constance Charlotte Selby, who followed her for years, was either her mother or the mother of her mother, namely Merle's grandmother. All of it very secret, which can't have been easy on the movie star, Merle Oberon. As to Constance Joyce Selby she married and had four children. One of them came to see Merle, but was denied access, that scared she was to reveal her secret of not being white. Later on, when people started writing biographies of her, some of her secrets were disclosed, for instance in the book "Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star" (2025) by Mayukh Sen.

 

She was a star, and she made her name in movies like e.g. "Wuthering Heights" and "The Divorce of Lady X" with Laurence Olivier, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" with Leslie Howard, and "Desiree" with Marlon Brando. She really was "hot" during the 1930s, 1940s, and into the 1950s, and today it's a strange feeling that she should feel all this worried that her family secrets might be getting out into the public. After all, she was totally innocent of whatever had happened.

https://goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-merle-oberon-and-her-lifelong-secret/

Wikipedia