Happy 100th birthday, Luise Rainer
January 14th 2010 22:34
Luise Rainer, born in Germany in 1910, celebrated her 100th birthday this week, and said, "I haven't accomplished anything in life." Many would disagree.
Rainer, born in Düsseldorf, Germany, was a major screen star in 1930s Hollywood. She shared a house with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. She was the first German woman (and is still the only one) to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, for the 1936 hit musical The Great Ziegfeld. She won again in 1937 for her role as a Chinese peasant in the film adaptation of Pearl Buck’s novel The Good Earth, making her the first person to win consecutive Best Actor Oscars.
She swapped ideas with Albert Einstein, who was reportedly "astonished" by her, and she helped Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War. She personally helped Bertolt Brecht and (with Einstein) many other Jews escape from Nazi Germany to America.
The rise of the Nazis in Germany affected her in other ways. After several Jewish relatives from her mother’s side of the family were sent to die in concentration camps, Rainer became involved in the fight against Hitler. This offended the Hollywood glitter police who hid Rainer's heritage as a German Jew and claimed she was Austrian. The media fell for the dupe, nicknaming her The Viennese Teardrop.
The same studio executives who bent the truth became unimpressed when Rainer bent the rules of stardom. She did unacceptable things like wear trousers in public. She was even known to leave her home without makeup. Perhaps the final straw was to complain that the roles she was being offered were not challenging enough.
Rainer turned her back on Hollywood before she was 30.
“It was always only about money, money, money,” she said. "But I wanted to play good roles. I always wanted to improve, always learn."
With the end of World War 2, Rainer made homes in England and Switzerland with her second husband, English publisher Robert Knittel, and their child, and then largely devoted her time to her family. She turned down a role in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, which became a huge success on Broadway. She agreed to a role in 1959 in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita, but walked out when she found she was expected to share a bedroom scene with Marcello Mastroianni. Fellini reportedly went on his knees to beg her to stay, but she returned to England.
She cared for her family, she painted and she travelled extensively, but it was not until the death of Knittel in 1989 that she considered appearing before the camera again. She agreed to a role in a film adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler. She was 86 at the time. She travelled to Los Angeles in 2003 as an she was an honoured guest at the Academy Awards.
Luise Rainer continues to live in London. We wish her a happy birthday.
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