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 [...]