Merle Oberon on TCM

Merle Oberon, who’ll have her "Summer Under the Stars" day on Tuesday, Aug. 25, is one of those actresses I’d say unjustly suffered (and continue to suffer) from the Marion Davies Syndrome.
As I wrote in my Jennifer Jones on TCM post, I believe that many film critics and historians dismiss actresses such as Marion Davies (whose film career was a direct result of her relationship with William Randolph Hearst), Norma Shearer (MGM’s second-in-command Irving Thalberg), and Jennifer Jones (producer David O. Selznick) because they had powerful backers.
The fact that Davies and Jones could quite possibly have become even bigger stars had their sponsors been less controlling and more discerning, and that Shearer would probably have reached superstardom [...]

Best Films – 1945

Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter
FILM
Blithe Spirit
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward
Boule de suif / Angel and Sinner
d: Christian-Jaque; scr: Henri Jeanson
Brief Encounter
d: David Lean; scr: Noel Coward, Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Ronald Neame
Dead of Night
d: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer; scr: John Baines, Angus MacPhail
Les Enfants du paradis / Children of Paradise
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Prévert
Leave Her to Heaven
d: John M. Stahl; scr: Jo Swerling
Love Letters
d: William Dieterle; scr: Ayn Rand
Mildred Pierce
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Ranald McDougall, Catherine Turney
A Royal Scandal
d: Otto Preminger; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer
State Fair
d: Walter Lang; scr: Paul Green, Oscar Hammerstein II, Sonya Levien
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
d: Elia Kazan; scr: Tess Slesinger, Frank [...]