PRINCESS MERLE

Rating:
Summary: The beauty of Merle Oberon
Review: 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.