Anytime the rain wants to stop
I would be A-OK with that. I guess this must be what it's like to live in Seattle. Seriously, I think the paper said we had 28 rainy days in March.

Well, in the meantime, I will blog about something I learned recently. I was watching part of a PBS program on Samuel Goldwyn and one of the stars he helped to launch was Merle Oberon, who, it turns out, was born in India! IMDB says she was of "mixed Welsh-Indian parentage." She starred in The Dark Angel and Wuthering Heights under Goldwyn. This was back in the 30's! There was a (partly, at least) Indian actress starring in American movies! Wow, who knew?

She passed in 1979, but the show included some interview footage of her talking about Goldwyn, and she did have a slightly Indian/British accent and mannerisms, and openly talked about the fact that she was Indian (in discussing how she was cast first as an Asian character and then as Caucasians).

I know there are now many South-Asian-Americans working in Hollywood (e.g. M. Night Shyamalan, Jay Chandrashekhar, "Kumar" from Harold and Kumar, and that guy from The English Patient, and now since my parents have moved down there, there may be a danger of two more), but I found it surprising that in that era such a thing was easily accepted by the movie-going public. Maybe she wasn't "out" as Indian until later? Or they marketed her as some sort of exotic person?

The other most surprising South Asian American in Hollywood I found was stunt-man Deep Roy, late of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame (though apparently he even had a role in The Dark Crystal).

I guess that's the American Dream thing at work. Move here as the child of two doctors and you're free to throw away your life making disgustingly profitable cheesy horror movies and looking really hot in an American Express commercial.
- posted by k @ 9:29 AM