Luise Rainer

Luise Rainer
Portrait from September 2 1937
Years active	1932 - 1997
Height	5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)
Spouse(s)	Clifford Odets (1937-1940) Robert Knittel (1945-1989)

Luise Rainer (born January 12, 1910 in Vienna, Austria) is a two-time Academy Award-winning film actress. She is currently the oldest living winner of an Academy Award.

The daughter of Heinrich Rainer by his spouse Emmy née Koenigsberger, Luise was educated in Vienna. She made her first appearance on the stage at the Dumont Theatre, Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1928. She next appeared in various theatres in Jacques Deval's play Mademoiselle, Sydney Kingsley's play Men in White, George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Luigi Pirandello's comedy Six Characters in Search of an Author, and was a member of Max Reinhardt's company in Berlin.

Luise Ranier also acted in Max Reinhardt's Vienna theater, and appeared in several German language films before being discovered by an MGM talent scout in 1935. She moved to Hollywood that year and studied English under Constance Collier, and made her first American film appearance opposite William Powell in Escapade (1935). Her next two films won her consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actress, first for her portrayal of actress Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and next as a Chinese peasant in The Good Earth (1937). She became the first actress to win back-to-back Oscars, followed only by Katharine Hepburn many years later. Rainer would also describe winning those two Oscars as the "worst possible thing" to befall her career.

in The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

The infamous legend of an Oscar curse probably originated with Rainer because, following her two wins, her career virtually ended in Hollywood. She made a few films in 1938 but all of them were ill advised and not well received. She refused to be stereotyped or to knuckle under to the studio system and studio head Louis B. Mayer was unsympathetic to her demands for serious roles. Disenchanted with Hollywood, where she later said it was impossible to have an intellectual conversation, she moved to New York City to live with her husband, playwright Clifford Odets whom she had married in 1937. Rainer and Odets divorced three years later after a stormy relationship, marked by Rainer having had at least one abortion at Odets' direction.

Luise Ranier made her first appearance on the English stage at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, May 1, 1939, as Francoise in Jacques Deval's play Behold the Bridge; and her first London appearance at the Shaftesbury Theatre on May 23, 1939, in the same part. Returning to America she made her first appearance on the New York stage at the Music Box Theatre in May 1942 as Miss Thing in James M. Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella.

She made one more film appearance in Hostages in 1943, and abandoned Hollywood in 1944 after she married publisher Robert Knittel. She had become an American citizen in the 1940s, but they had apparently lived in the UK for most of their marriage. He died in 1989. They had one daughter, Francesca Knittel.

Rainer made sporadic television and stage appearances following she and her husband's move to Britain, appearing in a single episode of the World War II television series Combat! in 1965, and took a dual role in an episode of The Love Boat in 1983. She later appeared in the film The Gambler (1997) in a small role, marking her film comeback at the age of 87. She made two appearances at the Academy Awards ceremonies (in 1998 and 2003) in special retropective tributes to past winners.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6300 Hollywood Blvd.

Template:S-awards

Filmography

• Yearning 202 (1932)
• Madame hat Besuch (1932)
• Heut' kommt's drauf an (1933)
• Escapade (1935)
• The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
• The Good Earth (1937)
• The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937)
• Big City (1937)
• The Toy Wife (1938)
• The Great Waltz (1938)
• Dramatic School (1938)
• Hostages (1943)
• The Gambler (1997)
• Poem: I Set My Foot Upon the Air and It Carried Me (2003)

External link

• Luise Rainer at IMDb