She married Alexander Korda (Michael Korda's uncle) and under his tutelege became a major British star.

Once she shed her 'chee-chee,' a derogatory term for Anglo-Indian background, Oberon enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle with enough romantic turbulence to crack up an entire air field of jet-setters. Oberon was actually the daughter of an Indian mother and British engineer who worked on the railroads - a fact the actress was able to hide by weaving an elaborate made-up past, even going as far as having her mother pose as Oberon's maid or 'nanny.' In Princess Merle (Coward, McCann, 1983), biographers Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, intrigued by Merle Oberon's evasiveness when questioned about her early life, unearthed Oberon's birth certificate in Bombay, not in Tasmania where Oberon claimed she was born to English parents traveling through Australia. It has everything, in fact, except an editor's touch, which is amusing since Korda himself is the editor in chief of the very house which, through an affiliate, is publishing the 650-page Queenie.īut a novel packaged as a blockbuster with a huge paperback sale is not insignificant, and predisposed readers may find Queenie's multitude of sins deliciously sinful - the chocolate box of poison that Korda left out of his celebrated Charmed Lives. Queenie, a very thinly disguised portrait of film star Merle Oberon, suffers - or flourishes, depending on your point of view - from ladle after ladle of Hollywood necrophilia and Dallas/Dynasty wish-fulfillment fantasy.

WITH MICHAEL KORDA, nothing succeeds quite like excess.

Queenie by michael korda