Cinema: Rehearsal to Honeymoon

In 1932 Hungarian-born Cinema Producer Alexander Korda got his newly organized London Film Productions off to a so-so start with a film called Wedding Rehearsal. A tyro actress named Merle Oberon was in the cast. Next year Korda got enough money together to make the famed Private Life of Henry VIII, with Merle playing Anne Boleyn to Charles Laughton’s Henry. Henry VIII not only put the British cinemindustry on the map, but brought fame & fortune to many, including Producer Korda, Cinemactress Oberon.

Before Korda spotted her in 1932, when she was doing bit parts for British studios, Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson, a lithe, dark girl with magazine cover curves and beckoning Eurasian eyes, had been a hostess in a London café. She says she was born in Tasmania, lived in Bombay and Calcutta, was brought to England at 17 by an army officer uncle.

Since Henry VIII, Merle Oberon has appeared in a succession of important Hollywood cinemas, but once a year she returns to make a film for Korda. She has been romantically linked with several cinema swains, chiefly Brian Aherne (opposite her in Beloved Enemy) and David Niven (opposite her in Wuthering Heights). But last week it was clear that, no matter how many cinema hands she had held for the publicity department, her heart still belonged to Korda. At Antibes, France, after some delay because experienced (once-divorced) Bridegroom Korda mislaid a necessary paper, Korda and Oberon were married, went on a Riviera honeymoon.