Features
Oscars recognizing talent, overlooking skin colour and racial origins
An article on Merle Oberon sent me finding facts about a notion I had that the Academy came in for criticism as being racist; only white stars were nominated for awards ignoring Black Americans and actors of other races like Indian. In the early years of Hollywood, actors who had foreign blood flowing in their arteries hid this fact assiduously. If even suspected, they would be suspended from stardom.
Merle Oberon (1911-1979, born Estella Merle O’Brian Thompson) was an acclaimed star in Hollywood from 1934, starting her acting career in silent films and moving on with great effort and painstaking training to look like and speak like an American. She used bleach heavily to lighten her skin. After her origins were known, she was recognized as Hollywood’s first South Asian star. Sri Lanka or rather Ceylon has a claim here, since Merle’s grandmother was born in Ceylon, a Burgher, it is said.
Charlotte Selby, born in Ceylon, moved to Bombay and married an Anglo-Irish tea plantation foreman. Her daughter, Constance Selby, was raped by her stepfather, the foreman, when just 14 and gave birth to a child – Merle – who was brought up by her grandmother Charlotte Selby. Her biological mother was to the world her older sister. When the child was three, the family moved to Calcutta. There Merle won a scholarship to an upper grade private school.
It was known she was of mixed racial birth – an Anglo-Indian – looked down upon by both the British and Indians. Merle was unhappy and took refuge in watching movies. In 1939, an English jockey she was in a relationship with, offered her the opportunity to migrate to England; thus on the pretext of being married to him, Merle moved to London. There she met Hungarian film person Alexander Korda, who promoted her entry into acting. She married him later.
A rising star, she moved to the US in 1934. Samuel Goldwyn spotted and promoted her.
She was nominated for an Oscar the next year for her stellar role in The Dark Angel but lost to Bette Davies. The racial prejudice was worse in Hollywood than in Britain, so Merle had to be extra watchful and diligent in hiding her South Asian origins. Apart from central government rules against immigration and bias against migrants, Hollywood followed the Hays Code which declared inter-racial marriage, sex as crimes. Merle invented she was born in Tasmania and thus untainted white.
Doubts and rumours surfaced about her non-whiteness in spite of her face appearing white with heavy bleaching; her learning to speak Americanese and cameras specially designed to film her which showed her skin to be fairer, she felt under threat until conditions eased. The truth about her parents was revealed publicly with the publication of Charles Higham and Roy Moseley’s 1983 biography Princess Merle. Earlier when her nephew, Samuel Korda,
wanted to write her biography, she threatened to sue him and cut him out of her will. She died of a stroke at age 68 with her secret not publicly punctured.
All white Oscars invaded by colour
Even after the likes of Merle Oberon, racial prejudice was severe. The first coloured actor to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel for her portrayal of the loyal nanny in the O’Hara family who tightened daughter Scarlett’s corset strings to near-non-breathing tightness in the 1940 film Gone with the Wind. There was uproar and objection to an African American, then called Black, winning an Academy Award alongside Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
McDaniel was a singer and film and theatre actor who suffered intense racial discrimination throughout her career. Atlanta held the premier of the film since its author Margaret Mitchel lived and wrote in Atlanta. Hattie was debarred from attending the all-white premier. At the Oscars ceremony in LA, she had to sit at a segregated table at the side of the room. She gave her reason for suffering these indignities: “I can be a maid for $7 a week. Or I can play a maid for $700 a week.”
She faced discrimination even within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) whose leader, Walter Francis White, looked down on her and other actors as “Playing the clown before the camera.” However it did force Hollywood to give more opportunities to African Americans in film roles. More help was given, probably, by outstanding stars of the likes of Sydney Poitier.
In 2016, after another all-white set of acting nominations, the #OscarsSoWhite protest movement gained global attention. Yet, the next two years also saw all Oscars being awarded to white actors. Things improved after that: more non-whites winning acting awards but also for other sections like Best Director. Mira Nair was nominated for her direction of the films Namesake and Mississippi Masala and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film Salaam Bombay in 1989.
Non-White stars
Plenty in this category and increasing. I will however write about two of them.
Sir Ben Kingsley
was born in Snainton near Scarborough in Yorkshire to a Gujerati father from Jamnagar and an English mother, in 1943, and named Krishna Pandit Bhanji. Within five decades of his acting career he received accolades and awards including Oscars, Bafta, Golden Globe, Grammy and Primetime Emmy. He won one Academy Award and was nominated for three more and the Britannia Award in 2013. He was honoured by the Queen by being appointed Knight Bachelor in 2002 for his service to the British film industry.
Kingsley began his acting career by joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967 and continued in it for the next 15 years. The year he joined he acted in As You Like It and subsequently acted in many Shakespeare plays He was also into television roles.
The role he is best known for is Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s feature film Gandhi (1982). Those who saw it were suitably stunned by the close resemblance between the real Gandhi and Ben Kingsley portraying him. What I remember best are the actor’s eyes, deep and shiny showing great kindness, humility and determination too.
The film won eight Oscars including Best Actor; Best Director, Best Picture, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Best Screenplay. It was also named by the British Film Institute the 34th greatest British film in the 20th century.
Incidentally the highest number of Oscars won in a year – 11 – are shared by three films: Ben Hur 1959; The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King 2003; Titanic 1997. West Side Story 1961 won ten Oscars. Two films won nine each: The Last Emperor 1987 and The English Patient 1996. Five films that won eight Oscars each are Slumdog Millionniare, My Fair Lady, Gandhi, From Here to Eternity, Cabaret.
Moving to the now, I include among Indian stars who have made their mark worldwide – Frieda Selena Pinto. Born in 1984 to Catholic parents from Mangalore, Karnataka, she was raised in Mumbai and schooled at St Xaviers’. Her mother was the principal of a school in West Mumbai and her father a senior branch manager for the Bank of Vadga in Bandra, West Bengal. Frieda was determined from a young age to be an actor. She turned model for two and a half years and appeared in many TV ads for products like Wrigley’s Chewing Gum. Promoted to Television producer, she visited many countries. Then she got the boost she needed to fulfill her dream: acting. She was selected to play the female lead role in the 2008 production of Slumdog Millionaire opposite Dev Patel who was selected in Britain as he was already in films. Slumdog … was directed by Danny Boyle and filmed in India, much of it in the Juhu slums which is its backdrop. It swept the awards board: Oscar, Bafta et al.
In 2020 Frieda starred as Usha Bala Chilakuri, Stanford law student and special girl friend of JD Vance, the film being about his life until he enters politics. I watched Hillbilly Elegy (2020), much about the Vice President’s mother’s battle with addiction to drugs and was struck by how closely Frieda resembled the young Mrs Vance; notwithstanding film make-up. Frieda is still very much in films, seeking roles in both Hollywood and Bollywood.