Merle Oberon

And it's played to perfection by the great Laird Krieger as Mr. Slade, which I think is great.

But Merle Oberon is in this.

George Sanders is in this.

Cedric Hardwick is in this.

And because it is so violent and sprawling, the adaptation history is incredibly fraught.

You have the famous 1939 William Wyler film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which won an Oscar for cinematography.

You have the 1970 version starring Timothy Dalton, a 1992 attempt that cast Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.

Binoche.Trying to capture the whole book

And he was the leading man for some of Hollywood's most powerful leading ladies.

I mean, you think about the women he was up against, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Merle Oberon, Ruth Chatterton-

[laughs]

...

Mm-hmm.

Which is great.

You know, same year, he appears with Merle Oberon in another movie I love that takes place on an ocean liner, Till We Meet Again, also with Geraldine Fitzgerald.

This one's a romantic drama, and his reserve is just perfect for this movie.

It is as indifferent and destructive as a thunderstorm.

And when we look at William Wyler's 1939 film classic starring Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine, you see that elemental fury brought to the screen.

The cinematography in that 1939 version won an Oscar, right?

Yes.

We're Harmony Bank, where better happens together.

This is Merle Oberon.

I should like to read you some poems, some of my favorite poetry.

¶¶ Oh, wert thou in the cold blast, On yonder leave, on yonder leave, My plaidie to the angry eart, I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee.

Now while this was being filmed, Ingrid Bergman was filing for divorce from her husband in Juarez.

She actually had the same attorney who handled Merle Oberon's divorce.

Elizabeth Taylor graduated from high school.

The MPAA bans the bicycle thieves because it dared to show a little boy urinating in the street.

You know, it's so funny, just the topic that we're going to be talking about and your wonderful new book, which we'll get to.

Mayuk and I, I had him on to talk about, over a year ago, to talk about his book about Merle Oberon, and I feel like half the time we talked about soaps.

Yeah.

yeah so it's like perfect that this ended up working out and you your expertise i believe in addition to the cbs soaps is also in prime time soap operas which charlotte loves so

It's this idea that especially, you know, if you look at the history of Hollywood, right, in that post-68 period when you got the demolition of the Hays Code and everything like that, you know, that sort of ushers in this new period of new Hollywood, right? I should actually back up for a sec.

That really came with the popularity of films like The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, as Mark Harris has written about, et cetera, et cetera, right? And what that means is that in the 70s, there is shrinking space for those sorts of women's pictures that had...

buried the likes of joan crawford and betty davis and my girl merle oberon through the 1940s right and if you look at things like the top 10 money-making stars poll whatever barometer there was industry for measuring who was the uh most popular star right uh it's i believe barbara streisand is the only woman who's on that pretty consistently throughout the 70s you only got Goldie Hawn and Allie McGraw in there, you know, sometimes right throughout the 70s.

But what soap operas did, especially daytime soap operas, is that they did put women's stories front and center.