Merle oberon scarlet pimpernel

Romney was active from the early 1760s to the late 1790s, so it makes sense that he would be a character in The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Fun Facts and Trivia: The man who paints a portrait of Lady Blakeney is named Romney (Melville Cooper). She and Ballard divorced in 1949. She was treated badly by her classmates because of her unconventional background and she eventually left the school to be taught at home.

It was in Calcutta that Merle developed a passion for films and acting and she began her performing life with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society.

She was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA, in the Garden of Remembrance.

Merle Oberon Academy Awards

No Wins:
One Unsuccessful Nomination:
Best Actress ... Orczy originally wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel as a stage play, where it was first performed at Nottingham in 1903, and later performed at London’s West End in 1905 where it quickly became a massive success.

“Pimpernel” Smith updated the novel’s setting to modern day Europe and focused on a seemingly timid English professor who secretly rescues the victims of Nazi persecution in Germany. The Scarlet Pimpernel was quite popular with general audiences in Britain at the time. Korda had previously directed Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII.

The Scarlet Pimpernel began filming in September of 1934, and it was primarily shot on sets in Buckinghamshire and London. The name of actor Morland Graham (Treadle) was incorrectly spelled as “Moreland Graham” in the film’s credits. Whilst still married, she had a brief affair in 1941 with Richard Hillary, an RAF fighter pilot who had been badly burned in the Battle of Britain.

The family's living conditions improved when they moved to Calcutta in 1917. Constance died in 1937 and when Merle later commissioned a portrait of her, she instructed the painter to lighten her mother's complexion to hide the fact that she was part-Indian.

Early years

As a child, Merle's nickname was 'Queenie'. Later, when Constance joined her in Hollywood, Merle used to explain to friends that the older woman who lived in her house was her maid.

Howard bounces between the foppish, sissy boy aristocrat and the cunning, ingenious hero, who is a master of disguise. Her early years were lived in poverty in Bombay. Andre Sennwald of The New York Times praised Leslie Hamilton’s performance, as well as the film’s cinematography and script. Though somewhat forgotten today, The Scarlet Pimpernel continues to receive generally positive reviews from critics.