Merle Oberon attained Hollywood immortality with a nomination for a Best Leading Actress Oscar for her role in the 1935 film The Dark Angel. It was the first time a performer of colour had received an acting nomination at the Academy Awards but because Oberon concealed her South Asian identity throughout her lifetime and "passed" for white, very few people knew it. In Love, Queenie, the first biography in more than forty years of the India-born actress, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and previously untapped archival research to animate the Wuthering Heights star's hard-won journey to fame. From an upbringing in poverty, she rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite during Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age. A major biography of an often-overlooked talent, Love, Queenie empathetically captures one woman's story while illuminating truths on race, gender and power that still resonate today.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"[I]t takes chutzpah and sympathy to write a biography about Oberon, but Mayukh Sen has both... He also writes movingly in the book's introduction of his youthful empathy for the closet that Queenie Thompson built for herself and never left." -- Ty Burr - Wall Street Journal "'What does America want from its stars when they come from the margins?' Sen asks in this extraordinary account of the hardship and rampant racism Oberon, a movie star who spent her entire career hiding her South Asian roots, faced during Hollywood's golden age." -- The New York Times "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 "[Love, Queenie] is one of the best film-related biographies I've read" -- Brian McFarlane - The Sydney Morning Herald
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 232 mm
Breite: 151 mm
Dicke: 33 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-324-05081-0 (9781324050810)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
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.
