Celebrating Merle Oberon: Wuthering Heights + Book Signing with Mayukh Sen

With author Mayukh Sen in person! A major movie star of the 1930s and 1940s in both Hollywood and the UK, 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 US 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.

Film info:

*Wuthering Heights *

Dir. William Wyler. 1939, 104 mins. U.S. DCP. With Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Flora Robson, Donald Crisp. The dark landscape of the English moors comes to vivid life in the classic, rapturously shot black-and-white Hollywood adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel. Oberon is magnetic as Cathy, who loves eternally the mysterious Heathcliff (Olivier), hired by her well-to-do family as a servant. The film is today marked by the irony of casting Oberon, who hid her mixed-race status in real life, as the white Cathy, and the white Olivier as a character Brontë wrote as mixed-race. Such facts may deepen the tragic, star-crossed romance of the film, which the great William Wyler directed with evocative, romantic sweep, employing ace work from legendary craftsmen such as cinematographer Gregg Toland and composer Alfred Newman.

Tickets: $17.50 / $12 seniors and students / $10 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership.

Please order tickets online and pick them up at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.