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Luise Rainer was a German-American-British film actress. She was the first actress to win more than one Academy Award and, with that, the first to win back-to-back; at the time of her death, thirteen days shy of her 105th birthday, she was the longest-lived Oscar recipient, a superlative that had not been exceeded as of 2019.Rainer started her acting career in Germany at age 16, under the tutelage of Austria's leading stage director, Max Reinhardt. Within a few years, she had become a distinguished Berlin stage actress with Reinhardt's Vienna theater ensemble. Critics highly praised the quality of her acting. After years of acting on stage and in films in Austria and Germany, she was discovered by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scouts, who signed her to a three-year contract in Hollywood in 1935. A number of filmmakers predicted she might become another Greta Garbo, MGM's leading female star at the time.

Her first American film role was in Escapade in 1935. The following year she was given a supporting part in the musical biography The Great Ziegfeld, where, despite limited appearances, her emotion-filled performance so impressed audiences that she was awarded the Oscar for Best Actress. She was later dubbed the "Viennese teardrop" for her dramatic telephone scene in the film. For her next role, producer Irving Thalberg was convinced, despite the studio's disagreement, that she would also be able to play the part of a poor, plain Chinese farm wife in The Good Earth , based on Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. The subdued character role was such a dramatic contrast to her previous vivacious character that she again won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Rainer and Jodie Foster are the only actresses ever to win two Oscars by the age of thirty.

However, she later stated nothing worse could have happened to her than winning two consecutive Oscars, as audience expectations from then on would be too high to fulfill. After a string of insignificant roles, MGM and Rainer became disappointed, leading her to end her brief three-year film career, soon returning to Europe. Adding to her rapid decline, some feel, was the poor career advice she received from her then-husband, playwright Clifford Odets, along with the unexpected death at age 37 of her producer, Irving Thalberg, whom she greatly admired. Some film historians consider her the "most extreme case of an Oscar victim in Hollywood mythology". Wikipedia  

✵ 12. January 1910 – 30. December 2014
Luise Rainer photo
Luise Rainer: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous Luise Rainer Quotes

“I don’t believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage, or in my case also on screen, you have to be true.”

Luise Rainer

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

“I was nobody to make a pass to. I was very thin like a boy and I was very un-sexy.”

Luise Rainer

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

“I was never proud of anything. I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that.”

Luise Rainer

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

“I had a wonderful director, Sidney Franklin …. I worked from inside out. It's not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it. Hollywood was a very strange place. To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging.”

Luise Rainer

Of her film The Good Earth <br class="br">Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

“On Christmas night, I danced with all kinds of fellows with pimples and all kinds of sores. I suddenly felt, ‘What is this being shy? I have to give myself, I just felt I didn't want to be shy, I didn't want to draw away, but give myself, I mean, not physically, but be there. It was a great lesson also for me, this tour through Africa and Italy during the war.”

Luise Rainer

Being on Ascension Island in 1944 <br class="br">Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

“How can you close your eyes and say this has nothing to do with me? I'm not speaking about politics. Politics is a terrible thing. Everyone wants power.”

Luise Rainer

Of the bombing of Kosovo <br class="br">Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

Luise Rainer Quotes

“I'll tell you a wonderful story. Coming with all of these ideas that I had, and still have, and still feel because I never change and still believe in the same things. Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a lun­cheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, ‘Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do,' and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table.”

Luise Rainer

Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

“The secret of a long life is to never trust a doctor.”

Luise Rainer

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

“For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me.”

Luise Rainer

Spartacus Schoolnet biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArainer.htm

“That girl is a Frankenstein, she’s going to ruin our whole firm.”

Luise Rainer

Louis B. Mayer
About, Spartacus Schoolnet biography

“Most observers agree that Rainer won her Oscar as the result of her moving and poignant performance in just one, single scene in the picture, the famous telephone scene in which the broken-hearted Held congratulates Ziegfeld over the telephone on his upcoming marriage to Billie Burke while trying to retain her composure and her dignity. During the scene, the camera is entirely focused on Rainer, and she delivers a tour-de-force performance. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous scenes in movie history.”

Luise Rainer

Jon Hopwood
About, Spartacus Schoolnet biography

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