Love, Queenie

Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star

Mayukh Sen (New York University)

$49.95

Hardback

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English

WW Norton & Co
06 May 2025

Film, TV & Radio; Biography: arts & entertainment

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Hers was a face that ""launched a thousand ships,"" a so-called exotic beauty who the camera loved and fans adored. Her nomination for The Dark Angel marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Almost ninety years before actress Michelle Yeoh would triumph in the same category, Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father in India, broke through a racial barrier-but no one knew it. Oberon was ""passing"" for white.

In the first biography of Oberon (1911–1979) in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and heretofore untapped archival material to capture the exceptional life of an oft-forgotten talent.

Born into poverty, Queenie Thompson dreamt of big-screen stardom. By sheer force of will, she immigrated to London in her teens and met film mogul Alexander Korda, who christened her ""Merle Oberon"" and invented the story that she was born to European parents in Tasmania. Her new identity was her ticket into Hollywood. When she was only in her twenties, Oberon dazzled as Cathy in Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier. Against the backdrop of Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age and the United States's hostile immigration policy towards South Asians in the twentieth century, Oberon rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite, all while keeping a secret that could have destroyed her career.

Tracing Oberon's story from her Indian roots to her final days surrounded by wealth and glamor, Sen questions the demands placed on stars in life and death. His compassionate, compelling chronicle illuminates troubling truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.

By: Mayukh Sen (New York University)
Imprint: WW Norton & Co
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 163mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 505g
ISBN: 9781324050810
ISBN 10: 1324050810
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 06 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award-winning author of Taste Makers. He is a 2025 Fellow at New America, and has written on film for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Criterion Collection. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews for Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star

""Love, Queenie is a deeply drawn portrait of the fascinating screen star Merle Oberon. Told with empathy and rigor, it’s also a grand tour of Hollywood’s opulence and racism through the decades. A compelling story of one woman’s struggle to make a life for herself against the odds. I could not put this book down."" -- Padma Lakshmi, author of Love, Loss, and What We Ate ""Love, Queenie introduced me to a star whose life story I now find extraordinary. More, this entrancing book left me reflecting on the society which compelled such a star to hide who she was all her life. An invaluable biography rich with surprises, heartbreak, and the complicated fulfillment of dreams."" -- Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning ""Mayukh Sen has written a deeply sympathetic portrait of one of Hollywood’s most misunderstood figures. Love, Queenie is not only a love letter to Merle Oberon’s under appreciated filmography, but also an unflinching examination of how the era’s racial codes constricted her life, on and off the screen."" -- Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll ""Merle Oberon never got to tell the true story of her life. Mayukh Sen finally has, and it rivals that of any character she played on the screen. I couldn’t put this book down."" -- Carla Valderrama, author of This Was Hollywood