Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon - [20th Century Photographer]

London: London Films, [Ca. 1930s]. Original B&W photograph issued as a postcard. 5.5 x 3.5 inches. Very Good+. Printed on verso: "Film Partners" Series, 85, Long Acre, London. Made in Great Britain. Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 - 1 June 1943) was an English actor and film maker. He also wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s. Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard is probably best remembered for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). Merle Oberon (born Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson; 19 February 1911 - 23 November 1979) was a British actress[1] who began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). After her success in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), she travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Dark Angel (1935). A traffic collision in 1937 caused facial injuries that could have ended her career, but she recovered and remained active in film and television until 1973. Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson was born in Bombay, British India, on 19 February 1911. Merle was given "Queenie" as a nickname, in honour of Queen Mary, who visited India along with King George V in 1911. London Films Productions is a British film and television production company founded in 1932 by Alexander Korda and from 1936 based at Denham Film Studios in Buckinghamshire, near London. The company's productions included The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Things to Come (1936), Rembrandt (1936), and The Four Feathers (1939). The facility at Denham was taken over in 1939 by Rank and merged with Pinewood to form D & P Studios. The outbreak of war necessitated that The Thief of Bagdad (1940) be completed in California, although Korda's handful of American-made films still displayed Big Ben as their opening corporate logo. More than 40 years after Korda died in January 1956, the company returned to active film-making in 1997 with Morgan Mason as the chief executive. .

[20th Century Photographer] - Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon