One upon a time in a galaxy far, far away (Hollywood of the 1930s), the one requirement necessary to be successful in movies was to have a beautiful puss. It's what audiences at that time paid to see: jawdroppingly gorgeous people of the Hedy Lamarr-Tyrone Power-Madeleine Carroll variety who looked totally unlike anyone living down the block in ye ole hometown. That kind of thinking of Hollywood as a "dream factory" couldn't be more different from the way people think of it today. Now when Hollywood producers cast people who are particularly attractive--be it someone like Charlize Theron or Michelle Pfeiffer--by the time the cameras roll, wads of money have been spent to make sure the actors look as frighteningly grotesque as possible. (Check out Theron's 2003 Monster.)

But it was in the era that Hollywood dispensed dreams rather than stark reality that our Star of the Month Merle Oberon was in her heyday as a fascinator. She was, without question, not only physically stunning with her exotic looks (some bios claimed she was born in India, others said Tasmania, both claims were questioned at times) but a true woman of the world with many famous friends as her fame grew. (England's Prince Philip was a close pal, also Noel Coward with whom Merle often competed with Marlene Dietrich as to which Coward would escort to various high profile events.)

Few traveled in the lofty kind of terrain Merle did, always wearing a glittering display of expensive jewelry (her collection was equal to Elizabeth Taylor's) and lavishly dressed (later in her life by Cuban-born Luis Estevez), she was also one of the luckiest of actresses since for several years she had two of the world's most famous producers both hunting for and buying properties specifically for her. One was Hungarian-born Alexander Korda, who in the 1930s became England's most important film producer (he always envisioned Oberon as an elegant woman to the manner born and cast her that way in such big-scale films as The Private Life of Don Juan [1934], The Scarlet Pimpernel [1934] and Lydia [1941]), in 1939 he went a step further and married her, thus she became Lady Korda when Korda was knighted in 1942.

At the same time, she was also under contract to Hollywood's Samuel Goldwyn who saw Merle as a healthy, upbeat heroine and thus always cast her as such, one example being the film that brought her a Best Actress Academy Award® nomination (1935's The Dark Angel) and producing the classic movie which forever immortalized her on screen, 1939's Wuthering Heights, with Laurence Olivier. We'll be showing all five of those exceptional Merle Oberon films on Fridays in primetime this month, along with 20 others which include a wide range of great talents including Marlon Brando as Napoleon, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. as Don Juan, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Dana Andrews, directed by such masters as William Wyler, Stanley Donen, Ernst Lubitsch, Jacques Tourneur and Julian Duvivier.

If you don't know the full-spectrum of the work of this great star of the 1930s and '40s, it's high time you did. Do come join us for some beautiful times every Friday this month at 8 pm.

by Robert Osborne