Editing Merle Oberon (section)

==Personal life==
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[File:Merle Oberon, 1937, Gerald L. Brockhurst.jpg|alt=Portrait of Merle Oberon, by Gerald L. Brockhurst, painted in 1937, Oil on canvas. 33-3/4 x 29 inches (85.7 x 73.7 cm).|thumb|Merle Oberon, 1937, portrait by Gerald L. Brockhurst|left]] -->
Charlotte Selby, Oberon’s possible birth grandmother, raised Oberon as her daughter until her death in 1937. In 1949, Oberon commissioned paintings of Charlotte based on an old photograph (but depicting Charlotte with lighter skin),<ref name="sapnamagazine.com">Kahn, Salma. [http://sapnamagazine.com/?p=537 "Hollywood's first Indian actress: Merle Oberon."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090131064019/http://sapnamagazine.com/?p=537 |date=31 January 2009 }} ''SAPNA Magazine'', Winter 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2016.</ref> which hung in all her homes until Oberon's own death in 1979.<ref>Higham and Moseley 1983, p. 100.</ref>

===Relationships and marriages===
Oberon married director [[Alexander Korda]] in 1939. While 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]]. They met while he was on a goodwill tour of the United States. He later wrote the best-selling autobiography ''[[The Last Enemy (autobiography)|The Last Enemy]]''.  

Oberon became Lady Korda when her husband was knighted in 1942 by [[George VI|King George VI]] for his contribution to the war effort.<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=35719 |date=25 September 1942 |page=4175}}</ref> At the time, the couple was based at [[Hills House, Denham|Hills House]] in [[Denham, Buckinghamshire|Denham, England]]. She divorced him in 1945 to marry the American [[cinematographer]] [[Lucien Ballard]]. Ballard devised a special camera light for her, to obscure on film her facial scars suffered in the 1937 accident. The light became known as [[Catch_light|the "Obie"]].<ref name=biography>Higham and Moseley 1983, p. 161.</ref> She and Ballard divorced in 1949.

Oberon married Italian-born industrialist Bruno Pagliai in 1957, adopted two children with him and lived in [[Cuernavaca]], [[Morelos]], Mexico. While married to Pagliai, she had an affair with model [[Michael Edwards (actor)|Mike Edwards]], who was 33 years her junior.<ref>{{cite book|first=Michael|last=Edwards|year=1988|title=Priscilla, Elvis, and Me|publisher=St. Martin's Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/priscillaelvisme00edwa/page/214 214–215]|isbn=9780312022686}}</ref> In 1973, Oberon met then 36-year-old Dutch actor [[Robert Wolders]] while they filmed ''[[Interval (film)|Interval]]''. Oberon divorced Pagliai and married Wolders, who was 25 years her junior, in 1975.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Christopher|first=Schemering|date=28 April 1985|title=The High Price of Fame and Fortune|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1985/04/28/the-high-price-of-fame-and-fortune/fdc1ebd0-84e2-4a3f-ae0e-00abbd6940a1/|access-date=10 March 2021}}</ref>

===Disputed birthplace===
To avoid prejudice over her mixed background, Oberon created a "cover story" of being born and raised in [[Tasmania]], Australia, with her birth records being destroyed in a fire. The story eventually unravelled after her death.<ref>Higham and Moseley 1983, p. 291.</ref> Oberon is known to have been to Australia only twice.<ref name="pybus">{{Cite book |last=Pybus |first=Cassandra |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-Y3SP7A4lYC&pg=PA109 |title=Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree |date=1998 |publisher=Univ. of Queensland Press |isbn=978-0-7022-3036-3 |pages=161 |language=en}}</ref> Her first visit there was in 1965, on a film promotion. Another visit, to [[Hobart|Hobart, Tasmania]], was scheduled, but after journalists in Sydney pressed her for details of her early life, she became ill and shortly afterwards left for Mexico.<ref name=pybus/>

In 1978, the year before her death, she agreed to visit Hobart for a Lord mayoral reception. The Lord Mayor of Hobart became aware shortly before the reception that there was no proof she had been born in Tasmania, but he went ahead with the celebration to avoid embarrassment. Shortly after arriving at the reception, Oberon, to the disappointment of many, denied she had been born in Tasmania. She then excused herself, claiming illness, and was unavailable to answer questions about her background. On the way to the reception, she had told her driver that as a child she was on a ship with her father, who became ill when it was passing Hobart. They were taken ashore so he could be treated, thereby spending some of her early years on the island. During her Hobart stay, she remained in her hotel, gave no other interviews, and did not visit the theatre named in her honour.<ref name=pybus/>