I first ‘discovered’ (for myself) actress Merle Oberon while watching the essential Samuel Goldwyn produced-William Wyler directed drama These Three (1936), the first of two film versions of Lillian Hellman’s play “The Children’s Hour”; like Joel McCrea’s character, I was instantly captivated by her.

Subsequently, I made a habit out of looking for any future airings of Turner Classic Movies which feature the former Miss Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson (aka Queenie) in their casts, and rented another (The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) in which she plays Ann Boleyn) from Netflix. It was her future first husband producer-director Alexander Korda who really discovered her and changed her name to Merle Oberon before he cast her opposite (Best Actor Oscar winner) Charles Laughton’s serial bridegroom, King Henry.

Thanks to TCM, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her in the Goldwyn-Wyler Wuthering Heights (1939) – she plays Cathy to Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff – Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy That Uncertain Feeling (1941), and earlier this year – The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), and The Dark Angel (1935), for which she received her only Academy Award nomination (for Best Actress) in the title role – all three of these are currently on the schedule in the coming months (the last two, tonight!) along with Deep in my Heart (1954) and the aforementioned Wuthering Heights (1939), the latter during 2007′s 31 Days of Oscar. From time to time, you can also see her on the channel in the One Way Passage (1932) remake ‘Til We Meet Again (1940) opposite George Brent, as George Sand in the Chopin biography A Song to Remember (1945) with Cornel Wilde (and Paul Muni), and in director Jacques Tourneur’s thriller Berlin Express (1948), among others.

I think Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg nailed it when he described Ms. Oberon’s exotic beauty this way – “Beneath her dark hair and high forehead, two huge almond-shaped eyes illuminated her tawny skin. She had an inviting full mouth, a curvy figure, and a velvety skin“. This evening, discover her for yourself!