Let's be Merle Oberon's childhood in Tasmania.

Was she really from Tasmania or did she make that up? She was Indian but passed as white to get acting jobs.

My mother dared never go outside. Her skin was so pale, no earthly umbrella could shade her from Tasmania's harsh sun rays.

She kept her alabaster skin perfect by having the servants (we had so many) venture out into the day to fetch things for her.

Who?

When I was born, the neighbors from the Tasmanian gentry and our many, many servants gathered to remark how I blended in with my mother's crib sheets so seamlessly. They were the whitest white, bleached until they glistened like the back of swans in the sunlight.

OP, stop making fun of racial discrimination. If were anything other than she wouldnt get the chances that she did. Just stop it.

I read that Merle got her tubes tied so she could never give birth, instead adopting kids because she was so afraid they'd come out Indian. That's sad.

[quote] If were anything other than she wouldnt get the chances that she did.

?

I remember Tasmania so very well. It was very tropical being only a matter of feet from Papau New Guinea. Of course, unlike Papau New Guinea, only white people, like ourselves, were allowed on the island. Even on an island of only white people, I managed to stand out for being even whiter than anyone else in Tasmania. Local Tasmanians would loiter beneath the coconut palms to catch a glimpse of me, the beautiful girl notorious for her magnificent whiteness. I hated the attention but, being so very kind, I would acknowledge their gushing compliments as I made my way back to our absolutely enormous home. How I miss living in the tropics!

[quote]OP, stop making fun of racial discrimination.

Oh, kindly, fuck the fuck off, cunt.

Get thee hence to a more "serious" thread that will be more to your sour liking.

One time, when I was just little, mother and I were walking in Perth, which is the capital of Tasmania. I spotted someone who look rather strange to my young eyes, like she was from another planet. Her skin was so swarthy, I was absolutely sure mother and I had run across another species, unknown to our little corner of the world. When I asked mother about the dark creature across the street, mother calmed me. She told me she thought it might be what is called "an Indian lady," but couldn't be sure as she'd never seen one before. Thank goodness mother read so many books or she would never have known what an Indian woman looked like! And was able to calm me down from seeing such a novel, unsettling sight.

I'm Miss Oberon's pet thylacine. We had so much in common; you see, my sister was also my mother.

Many people think the hula was invented in Hawaii, but no. It was invented in my beloved home of Tasmania. Truly, I can't count the days when I would wander out onto its tropical beaches and watch natives (who I was not allowed to touch--except to smack for insolence--because they were not white like me). Often, they would entertain me with their delightfully child-like dance routines. And allow me to slurp coconut milk right from the just-cracked shell! How I laughed, knowing how mother would disapprove of my adopting the ways of the swarthy natives. Why, I would get a good talking to, I would! But mother was never the wiser about my fraternizing with those beneath us. And many years after I left my tropical birthplace, I would look back on those native women, now, no doubt, all dead from syphilis or booze, and I could still taste that sweet coconut milk. So their little lives had meant something after all.

Seems Merle ascribed to the Lucille La Sueur school of personal history. From Wikipedia:

For most of her life, Merle protected herself by concealing the truth about her parentage, claiming that she had been born in Tasmania, Australia,[5] and that her birth records had been destroyed in a fire.

She was raised as the daughter of Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington who worked in Indian Railways[6] and his wife, Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). Her mother also had Māori ancestry.[7] However, according to her birth certificate, Merle's biological mother was Charlotte's then-12-year-old daughter, Constance. Charlotte had herself given birth to Constance at the age of 14, the result of rape by Henry Alfred Selby, the Anglo-Irish foreman of a tea plantation.[7] To avoid scandal, Charlotte raised Merle as Constance's half-sister.[1][8]

Imagine having the given name of Estelle and going by Merle...

My mother loooved her! Said she was so beauuutiful!

What the fuck is a Pimpernel?? Is that the guy with the twirly moustache and top hat?

If that's true, R13, that means Merle was only 1/8 Indian. Seems ridiculous to hide that.

I’m actually from Tasmania and this is hilarious!

Errol Flynn was from Tasmania and used to laugh at Merle's stories.

I´m the avoided Scandal.

She´s my Sister! She´s Mother!

Interesting. Some Tasmanians still insist she was born there.

She liked to sing-ah.

Looking back on my childhood in dear Tasmania, it seems all but a dream. A sweet dream. Being part of the British Empire, all of Australia looked so very much like England, delightfully green, rainy, and civilized. We lived on the outskirts of Adelaide, Tasmania’s bustling capital. As a child, mother would allow nanny (any one of them) to take me into the city, but only on Saturdays. I was allowed to buy sweets with the local currency. Being a child of rare generosity, I would fling my sugary fortune at the kangaroos' mouths as we passed on the way back to our mansion. Years later, I found that kangaroos would often choke on the delicious hard candy I threw at them and die on the spot, which would explain the piles of kangaroos I would see the following Saturday. I don’t think this takes away from my generosity in parting with my prized sweets, do you?

R6, Merle had an ectopic pregnancy and had to have an emergency hysterectomy performed. This was before she came to Hollywood. Back then they didn’t always tell women if they had this operation under emergency circumstances. When she thought she might have to quit her film career due to her cosmetic poisoning incident in 1940, she thought she could be a mother and hostess for her then husband Alexander Korda. It was then that she found out that she could not have children.

[quote]I’m actually from Tasmania and this is hilarious!

Oh, you devil, you.

I want to visit Tasmania to see the still extant Merle Oberon sites.

She was pretty dark for being mostly Caucasian.

Actually, scratch that, the bio doesn’t say what her father was.

R24, you'd think not having had a period for years would have given her a clue.

She was beautiful, even with her fivehead.

R30 quite beautiful.

Both her mother and grandmother were raped as children by Englishmen. Her mother gave birth to her when she was 12 years old. Merle’s father was her grandmother’s husband, who raped his step daughter.

Her grandmother pretended to be her mother.

Her grandmother gave birth at age 14. .

It’s why she had webbed toes and a hatred for gothic revival.

What funny elocution the Indian miners had!

It’s so funny that dark children were impregnated by grown men, and then the mothers and children had to pretend to be someone they weren’t, so that women and girls wouldn’t blamed for being little whore temptresses who led the good Christian white men astray. They hid their whole lives.

R33 I don't get it.

I’m the keeper of her fivehead. Magnificent dome. A proto Rihanna if you will…