I remember reading somewhere where she concealed her Indian heritage. Do you have any idea why she did this?

My understanding is that Merle, once famous, sought to avoid unwelcome speculation about the specifics of her heritage as it featured, in her mother and grandmother, two consecutive generations of young unwed mothers, and her grandmother (who raised her, and who, in fame, Merle passed off, via mutual agreement, as her beloved live-in housekeeper) having been fully Indian, her mother half so. I gather, too, that, at the time, it would have been considered a social negative for Merle, who was viewed as quintessentially upper-class British (but exotically so), to be realized and acknowledged as ethnically part Indian.

That said, she definitely had clear pronounced hints of that Indian heritage in her face, when you look at many of the beautiful pictures of her, and in some of her early (in particular) films.

Following are some excerpts from the Wikipedia article about Miss Oberon's heritage:

Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson [later known by the world as Merle Oberon] was born in Bombay (now known as Mumbai), British India on 19 February 1911....

Over the years, Oberon obscured her parentage. Some sources claim Merle's parents to have been Arthur Terrence O'Brien Thompson, a British mechanical engineer from Darlington, who worked in Indian Railways, and Charlotte Selby, a Eurasian from Ceylon with partial Māori heritage. However, at the age of 14, Charlotte had in Ceylon given birth to her first child Constance, the result of a relationship with Henry Alfred Selby, an Irish foreman of a tea planter. Constance, age 12 at the time of Merle's birth, was actually Merle's biological mother. Despite this, Charlotte raised Merle as her own child and as Constance's sister. Charlotte's partner, Arthur Thompson, was listed as the father in Merle's birth certificate....Constance eventually married and had four other children...with her husband Alexander Soares. All the siblings reportedly believed Merle to be their aunt (the sister of their mother Constance), when in fact she was their half-sister....

When Harry Selby tracked down Merle's birth certificate in Indian government records in Bombay, he was surprised to discover he was in fact Merle's brother and not her nephew....

In 1929, Merle met a former actor named Colonel Ben Finney...and she dated him. However, when he saw Oberon's dark-skinned mother (actually her grandmother) one night at her flat, and realised Oberon had mixed ancestry, he decided to end the relationship....

A very confusing heritage. So did Merle decide to hide her Indian heritage when she was rejected by Finney..

Off topic: In The Imitation of Life 1959 version, Sarah Jane who was black but had white skin, tried to pass herself off as white. She wanted to marry a white man who would know nothing about her background. My mind kept going back to, what happens if she marries a white man and has a black baby, which quite likely could happen. That just didn't make sense to me in the movie.

Per the rest of the Wikipedia article, it was at that point (shortly after the Finney rejection) that Merle got "discovered" and her rise to recognition and fame began, soon marrying Korda who essentially "made" her. But Finney had been who, despite his rejecting her romantically after discovering she was part Indian, aimed her towards the right people with the right connections.

Very true about The Imitation of Life (I also am a fan of the earlier version of it, I think starring Claudette Colbert if I recall correctly). With biology, well-kept secrets can come out, in time, based on how a child looks (for example, perfect example is Loretta Young's secret child [who was pretend-adopted], Judy Lewis, with Clark Gable; Judy inherited the Gable ears, as well as a lot of his facial look - thus making Judy's paternity a speculated-about whispering topic in Hollywood even before either party personally in the know eventually fessed up about it), without anyone ever saying a word.

Nature's curse lol. Illegitimate children end up looking like their fathers. I've seen it time and time again.

Incidentally, it occurred to me a short time ago that Merle's grandmother, who raised her like she was her mother, was only 26 or 27 when Merle was born - so became a GRANDMOTHER when only in her mid 20s! Grandmother Charlotte had been 14 when she had Merle's mother Constance - who had Merle when she was just 12.

Classic beauty.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

Classic beauty.

Indeed, she is lovely! The Lodger starring Merle is an example of high-quality, early British cinema from The Master.

Yes, very good movie, Cell. (I've for a long time been intending to, at some point, create a thread about it.)

Btw, here's a Merle topic that I created on The Scarlet Pimpernel's (1934) board a couple years ago.

@genplant29 said:

Incidentally, it occurred to me a short time ago that Merle's grandmother, who raised her like she was her mother, was only 26 or 27 when Merle was born - so became a GRANDMOTHER when only in her mid 20s! Grandmother Charlotte had been 14 when she had Merle's mother Constance - who had Merle when she was just 12.

Wow.