With more than 120 illustrations, some of them quite rare, the book is an account of how prevailing social and racist attitudes forced her to live a lie.

Merle Oberon scaled the heights of Hollywood to fame, fortune and a place in the hearts of a generation of filmgoers — but her origins were always clouded by mystery.

Even today, almost three decades after her death, many in Tasmania, the island she claimed as home, cling fiercely to the belief that Merle was one of theirs, and passions run high on both sides of the question.

The most famous Tasmanian was the king of swashbucklers, Errol Flynn, but Hollywood publicists invented other origins for him to save the effort of explaining where Tasmania is.

Did Merle invent the story of her early life for just the same reason — Tasmania’s remoteness and obscurity?

In this, the first book about Merle Oberon for more than two decades, Bob Casey, author of Errol Flynn and the Sword of Fate, looks at the evidence and draws a conclusion — but it’s a conclusion many Tasmanians still refuse to accept and the controversy will continue.

Chapters include

Daughter of Tasmania?: The beginning of the mystery

Chinese Whispers: The Lottie Chintock story

Passage to India: Firpo’s famous flirt

Hollywood Heights: Triumph in Wuthering Heights

Errol and Merle: Two contradictory characters

Sex and Consequences: A long and stormy love life

The Many Faces of Merle: Beauty and agony

Living the Lie: A tangled web

Hobart Homecoming: A curious episode in Tasmania

Mothers of Merle: Loss and betrayal

Plus a contrary view by Tasmanian personality Edyth Langham and an excerpt from a press interview with Merle Oberon,

Merle Oberon—Face of Mystery by Bob Casey
ISBN 978 0 9805482 1 1
128pp paperback, full colour
$A30 plus $6.50 p&p Australia
Published by Masterpiece@ixl
www.merleoberon.net

Merle Oberon: Face of Mystery is now in Hobart’s leading bookshops.

There has been a lot of debate about Merle’s origins. Author Bob Casey is absolutely convinced she was born in India but many Tasmanians are clinging to the Lottie Chintock story and insist Merle was born in Hobart, just a stone’s throw from where Errol was born.

It won’t convince the sceptics, but here is a copy of Merle’s birth certificate obtained from the Bombay records office, plus photos of her biological mother, Constance (left), and her grandmother, Charlotte, who raised Merle from birth.

Errol Flynn’s first film, In the Wake of the Bounty, contained documentary footage of erotic dancing by bare-breasted Tahitian women, which caused major problems with the Australian censors.

Director Charles Chauvel objected strenuously when the film was seized and several cuts were ordered; he even made threats to the Minister for Customs.

After all this fuss, most of the dancing sequences were restored and the film premiered in Sydney in March, 1933. Little was said about Errol Flynn’s performance as Fletcher Christian, but many raved about the Tahitian scenes.

There are several different versions of how the unknown and totally inexperienced Errol Flynn was chosen to play Fletcher Christian in In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). Writer and director Charles Chauvel supposedly saw a photo of Flynn after his yacht was wrecked off the Queensland coast and thought he had the necessary charisma.

According to John Hammond Moore in The Young Errol: Flynn Before Hollywood, a photo of Flynn and his mates on board Sirocco was published in a Sydney newspaper. However, that was more than two years earlier and it’s unlikely that Chauvel kept the photo “on the mere chance that he might make a movie and perhaps require the services of a completely unknown individual”.

Moore claims the budding film star was actually spotted on Sydney’s Bondi Beach by actor and casting agent, John Warwick, who arranged a meeting between Flynn and Chauvel in the Long Bar of the Hotel Australia.

Chauvel then chose Warwick to play Midshipman Young, and the three of them must surely have chatted about Flynn’s ancestry. Flynn’s scenes, including a re-enactment of the mutiny, were shot at the Cinesound studios in Sydney. Elsa Chauvel remembered the novice actor as a male butterfly who “breezed into our lives, caused trouble with the girls in the studio, and left”.

Flynn had a cavalier attitude towards sex throughout his adult life, but especially after his statutory rape trial. He frequented brothels and had a one-way mirror in his Hollywood home so he could observe his guests making love.

But his biggest weakness was young girls. David Niven remembered driving to Hollywood High School where Flynn described the girls as jailbait or ‘San Quentin quail’.

Flynn should have learned his lesson after his statutory rape trial in 1943 but continued having sex with young girls, including fifteen-year-old Beverly Aadland.

They met in 1957 when he was playing John Barrymore in Too Much, Too Soon and she was filming dance sequences for Marjorie Morningstar.

Errol called Beverly ‘Woodsie’, because she reminded him of a wood nymph, and she was the ‘small companion’ to whom he dedicated My Wicked, Wicked Ways.

Errol Flynn and the Sword of Fate is now available. At more than 130 pages with more than 130 illustrations — and a special Errol Flynn tour of Hobart, his home town — it’s the brightest book yet published about Tasmania’s most famous son.

Read about his mysterious ancestry, his colourful parents and his mischievous youth before he embarked on a life that became a legend both on and off the screen — and a family connection with the dramatic mutiny on the Bounty.

At just $A25 (plus $6.00 postage anywhere in Australia) it’s a bargain no Flynn fan will want to miss.

USA & Canada addresses: Errol Flynn and the Sword of Fate is $A25.00 plus $A15.00 for postage & packing.

UK & Europe addresses: Errol Flynn and the Sword of Fate is $A25.00 plus $A18.00 for postage & packing.

The recent visit of Rory Flynn to Hobart attracted a lot of publicity and preparations are now well under way to celebrate the centenary of her father’s birth in June, 2009.

Rory is due to return for the celebrations along with her son and nephew who are both handsome and successful young actors.

Rory brought with her from Hollywood a copy of Errol Flynn and the Sword of Fate and toured many of the locations photographed in the book, including the Errol Flynn Reserve in Sandy Bay and the street at the University of Tasmania named after her grandfather, Professor TT Flynn. Photo of Rory and Errol’s letters courtesy of The Mercury.

Rory donated memorabilia, including some of her father’s love letters, to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, played with some real Tasmanian Devils at Bonorong wildlife park, and also launched Bob Casey’s latest book, Merle Oberon: Face of Mystery.

There is absolutely no doubt about Errol’s birthplace, but Merle’s origins are fiercely debated. Bob Casey is convinced she was born in India but many Tasmanians are clinging to Merle, the beautiful star of Wuthering Heights (1939).

There is a chapter in the Merle Oberon book which records the first meeting between Merle and Errol. It happened on the SS Paris sailing from London to New York in 1934 and no, they didn’t end up in bed.

There are many other interesting links between these two Hollywood legends, including the fact they are buried in the same cemetery.

This new book by Bob Casey, a founder of the Errol Flynn Society of Tasmania, puts paid to many scandalous myths about history’s greatest Hollywood swashbuckler — and raises some interesting questions about his ancestry.

Casey says ‘Earl Conrad’s book Errol Flynn: A Memoir (1978) gives some valuable insights into the actor’s life but like Flynn’s autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways it is not always reliable.

‘It is not surprising that Flynn’s recollections were clouded. By 1959, his memory was notoriously bad—not helped by years of hard drinking. Many believe he was a compulsive liar; at the very least, he firmly believed the truth should never get in the way of a good story.’

So was Flynn a direct descendant of Midshipman Edward Young of HMS Bounty, as he and many others have claimed?

One possible bloodline involves one of Midshipman Young’s sons faking his death and spending time with the sexy young Queen of Tahiti. It’s a fascinating story, worthy of an Errol Flynn movie.