Amazon’s ‘The Last Tycoon‘ already comes packed with glossy studios and old-school movie magic. But one storyline has viewers leaning in a little closer. Margo Taft arrives on screen confident, yet she refuses to let anyone see something.
Most fans don’t know her biggest secret isn’t just a clever plot twist. It comes straight from a real Old Hollywood scandal that remained buried for decades, long after the actress at its center became a screen legend.
The Real Woman Who Inspired Margo Taft On-Screen
The series pulls familiar names from the studio era; Matt Bomer plays a young producing genius based on Irving Thalberg, while Kelsey Grammer channels a Mayer-style studio boss. But Margo Taft comes from a very different place. Jennifer Beals’s character takes direct inspiration from Merle Oberon, the glamorous star who spent her entire career hiding her true identity.
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Oberon shot to fame playing Cathy in the 1939 classic Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier, becoming one of the era’s most photographed faces. Behind the scenes, she lived with a fear Margo shares onscreen: the fear that Hollywood would end her career if anyone learned she was biracial. At the time, leading roles went only to white actors, and the pressure to “pass” was brutally real.
Her rise began when she moved to London at 17. Director Alexander Korda cast her in ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII‘ in 1933, which fast-tracked her into films like ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel‘ and ‘The Dark Angel‘, earning her an Oscar nomination for ‘That Uncertain Feeling‘ and ‘A Song to Remember’. She looked like the industry’s newest fairytale, but off-camera, she was living a script she couldn’t escape.
How ‘The Last Tycoon’ Mirrors Oberon’s Hidden Life
Oberon told the world she was born in Tasmania and raised by wealthy Indian godparents after her British Army officer father died. Many believe Korda, who later became the first of her four husbands, helped build that story to deflect curiosity about her background.
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In reality, she was born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson in Mumbai in 1911 and nicknamed “Queenie” after a royal visit that year. No one outside her inner circle knew the truth until four years after she died in 1979. The biography Merle: A Biography of Merle Oberon revealed that she was Anglo-Indian. Her mother was believed to be from what is now Sri Lanka with Māori roots, and her father was a British engineer. Far from the Hollywood sparkle, she grew up poor.
Her nephew, Michael Korda, later wrote the novel Queenie. He told The Los Angeles Times that her mixed heritage was an “open secret” within the family and said Oberon warned her she would sue him in 1979 if he used her real name and birthplace in a memoir, forcing him to hide it.
In ‘The Last Tycoon‘, Margo holds her own in a male-dominated studio system and even intimidates directors, at one point demanding they expose themselves before she steps on set. She also pretends to be white and has her Black mother pose as her maid, echoing the way Oberon’s mother, Charlotte Selby, did when they lived in England.
The Accident That Changed Oberon’s Life Forever
Beals shared that she knew Margo was based on Oberon. But said she wanted to create a character with her own layers. Her performance also hints at Oberon’s toughness. After a 1937 car crash damaged one side of Oberon’s face, she covered the scars with makeup and lighting tricks. While filming The Lodger in 1944, cinematographer Lucien Ballard attached a light to the camera to soften her features. The device became known as the “Obie,” spread across Hollywood, and Oberon later left Korda and married Ballard in 1945.
Beals said Margo’s journey shows how chasing freedom can feel isolating. Oberon’s real love life looked very different. After divorcing Ballard, she married a wealthy Italian-born Mexican businessman and adopted two children. In 1975, she married actor Robert Wolders, who later became Audrey Hepburn’s partner.
The final twist in Oberon’s story came in 2014, when her birth certificate became public. It showed that Selby was actually her grandmother. Her real mother was Selby’s daughter, Constance, who became pregnant at age 12 with Selby’s boyfriend, Arthur Thompson. Constance later had four more children who grew up believing Oberon was their aunt, not their half-sister. One of her half-brothers reached out after discovering the truth, but Oberon refused to meet him.
Beals, who has always spoken openly about being biracial, said she couldn’t imagine someone hiding their identity today. She recalled that when she campaigned for the role of Daphne Monet, Carl Franklin told her that several actresses were passing. Beals said she didn’t think she should be punished for embracing who she was, and she ultimately got the part. Margo Taft’s fictional journey and Oberon’s real one may be decades apart, but they tell the same story.
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