"Queenie" is a fictionalised biography of Merle Oberon, one of the most beautiful and successful film stars of the thirties and forties. (Oberon, whose real name was Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson, was nicknamed "Queenie" as a child and used the stage names Queenie O'Brien and Queenie Thompson during the early part of her career). Oberon was born in Calcutta of mixed British and Indian parentage, and moved to Britain as a teenager, where she worked as an exotic dancer before becoming a leading actress and marrying the Hungarian-born film director Alexander Korda. She was always sensitive about her mixed-race origins, and invented a fictitious past for herself, according to which she had been born in Tasmania, a part of the world she had never visited. She even went so far as to pass her dark-skinned mother off as her maid.
In the film the heroine, here named Queenie Kelly, is born in Calcutta of mixed British and Indian parentage. She moves to Britain where she works as an exotic dancer (euphemism for stripper) before she is discovered by a Hungarian-born film director, here called David Konig, who makes her a star under the name Dawn Avalon and gives her the leading role in his latest movie. Like Merle Oberon, Queenie/Dawn pretends to have been born in Tasmania, and passes her mother off as her maid.
Of course, this being a fictionalised biography, there have to be some fictional elements. As far as I am aware, the real Merle Oberon was never accused of murder. In the film, Queenie is implicated in the death of a high-ranking British colonial official named Sir Burton Rumsey; the truth is that he fell accidentally to his death while pursuing her with intent to rape her, but she dare not reveal the truth for fear that she will not be believed. Queenie is pursued obsessively by the dead man's daughter Prunella, who blames her for her father's death; Queenie's adoption of a pseudonym and a false biography owes as much to a desire to throw Prunella off the scent as it does to racial sensitivities. Oberon was already a major star before her marriage to Korda, which lasted until 1945 and then ended in divorce; in the film Konig acts as Queenie's Svengali, turning her into a star and then dying of a heart attack soon afterwards (c. 1938). Konig's death leaves Queenie free to marry her true love, a photographer named Lucien; in real life Oberon's second husband was indeed a photographer named Lucien.
The 1980s saw a number of films and television series set in colonial India ("Gandhi", "A Passage to India", "The Jewel in the Crown", etc.) and, like most of the other entries in the cycle, "Queenie" deals with the topic of relations between the British colonial masters and their Indian subjects. The British characters, especially the obnoxious Rumsey and the snobbish Prunella, are portrayed as obsessively racist, prejudiced against not only pure-blooded Indians but also those who, like Queenie, have a "touch of the tarbrush", the unlovely slang phrase used at the time to denote those of mixed racial origins. Queenie is horrified to learn that the film she is starring in is an epic being shot on location in India, as she has no desire to revisit the land of her birth, which holds bad memories for her.
Eventually, however, in a key scene near the end, she proudly announces her Anglo-Indian origins- and is warmly applauded for doing so. This scene clearly reflects the values of the eighties rather than those of the thirties- in real life Merle Oberon never publicly admitted to being of Indian descent. Had she done so, it would probably have meant the end of her film career, at least as a leading lady. Indeed, she continued to insist on her supposed Australian origins right up until her death in 1979.
A word of warning. This was originally a TV mini-series, but is now being sold on DVD as if it were a feature film. When my wife (a lifelong Kirk Douglas fan) purchased it recently there was nothing on the box to indicate its origins, apart from the words (in very tiny print) "Length: 232 minutes". Of course, if one does try and watch it as though it were a film, it is slow-moving and insanely overlong (longer than, say, "Dr Zhivago" or "Titanic", and around the same length as "Gone with the Wind"). Kirk Douglas, however, is always watchable and the lovely Mia Sara makes a charming heroine. If one watches it as a mini-series, however, over a number of evenings, it becomes, in a glossy soap-opera kind of way, more enjoyable. 6/10
In the film the heroine, here named Queenie Kelly, is born in Calcutta of mixed British and Indian parentage. She moves to Britain where she works as an exotic dancer (euphemism for stripper) before she is discovered by a Hungarian-born film director, here called David Konig, who makes her a star under the name Dawn Avalon and gives her the leading role in his latest movie. Like Merle Oberon, Queenie/Dawn pretends to have been born in Tasmania, and passes her mother off as her maid.
Of course, this being a fictionalised biography, there have to be some fictional elements. As far as I am aware, the real Merle Oberon was never accused of murder. In the film, Queenie is implicated in the death of a high-ranking British colonial official named Sir Burton Rumsey; the truth is that he fell accidentally to his death while pursuing her with intent to rape her, but she dare not reveal the truth for fear that she will not be believed. Queenie is pursued obsessively by the dead man's daughter Prunella, who blames her for her father's death; Queenie's adoption of a pseudonym and a false biography owes as much to a desire to throw Prunella off the scent as it does to racial sensitivities. Oberon was already a major star before her marriage to Korda, which lasted until 1945 and then ended in divorce; in the film Konig acts as Queenie's Svengali, turning her into a star and then dying of a heart attack soon afterwards (c. 1938). Konig's death leaves Queenie free to marry her true love, a photographer named Lucien; in real life Oberon's second husband was indeed a photographer named Lucien.
The 1980s saw a number of films and television series set in colonial India ("Gandhi", "A Passage to India", "The Jewel in the Crown", etc.) and, like most of the other entries in the cycle, "Queenie" deals with the topic of relations between the British colonial masters and their Indian subjects. The British characters, especially the obnoxious Rumsey and the snobbish Prunella, are portrayed as obsessively racist, prejudiced against not only pure-blooded Indians but also those who, like Queenie, have a "touch of the tarbrush", the unlovely slang phrase used at the time to denote those of mixed racial origins. Queenie is horrified to learn that the film she is starring in is an epic being shot on location in India, as she has no desire to revisit the land of her birth, which holds bad memories for her.
Eventually, however, in a key scene near the end, she proudly announces her Anglo-Indian origins- and is warmly applauded for doing so. This scene clearly reflects the values of the eighties rather than those of the thirties- in real life Merle Oberon never publicly admitted to being of Indian descent. Had she done so, it would probably have meant the end of her film career, at least as a leading lady. Indeed, she continued to insist on her supposed Australian origins right up until her death in 1979.
A word of warning. This was originally a TV mini-series, but is now being sold on DVD as if it were a feature film. When my wife (a lifelong Kirk Douglas fan) purchased it recently there was nothing on the box to indicate its origins, apart from the words (in very tiny print) "Length: 232 minutes". Of course, if one does try and watch it as though it were a film, it is slow-moving and insanely overlong (longer than, say, "Dr Zhivago" or "Titanic", and around the same length as "Gone with the Wind"). Kirk Douglas, however, is always watchable and the lovely Mia Sara makes a charming heroine. If one watches it as a mini-series, however, over a number of evenings, it becomes, in a glossy soap-opera kind of way, more enjoyable. 6/10