Luise Rainer was a German actor who had a brief career in Hollywood in the early 1930s and who won two Academy Awards back to back, in 1936 and 1937. She was the first person to win two Oscars consecutively, and the only German actress to win.
Early Years
Luise Rainer was born January 12, 1910 in Düsseldorf into a Jewish family and was fascinated by show business from an early age. Her father was against her ambitions but Rainer attended the Hochschule für Bühnenkunst (College for stagecraft) in Düsseldorf from 1926-1928 and became an actor after all.
She acted on stage in Düsseldorf and also starred in three movies: Sehnsucht 202 and Madame hat Besuch in 1932, and Heut kommt’s drauf an with Hans Albers in 1933. A scout for MGM discovered her in Vienna where she had been hired by Max Reinhard who is known for his founding of the Salzburger Festspiele and the annual production of Jedermann. In 1934, Rainer signed a contract with MGM and sailed to the U.S. Since there was a lot of resentment towards Germans at the time, she was marketed as an Austrian actress.
Hollywood
Luise Rainer won her first Academy Award in 1936 for her role as Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld, and the second one a year later in 1937 for her portrayal of the Chinese peasant O-Lan in The Good Earth, an adaption of Pearl S. Buck’s book of the same name.
In the years 1937 and 1938, Rainer filmed four more movies for MGM: The Emperor’s Candlesticks (1937), Big City (1937) with Spencer Tracy, The Toy Wife (1938) and Dramatic School (1938). None of them were overly successful and Rainer felt they didn’t make use of her talents.
Here is the telephone scene from The Great Ziegfeld showing Rainer as Anna Held calling her ex-husband to congratulate him on his new marriage. It is said that this scene won Rainer the Oscar.
After Hollywood
Rainer left MGM though she was still under contract for one more film. Apparently, she was considered difficult because she demanded roles with more depth and a higher salary. She also became disenchanted with Hollywood itself and the people’s lack of concern about the spread of fascism in Germany and Europe. Being a Jew herself, Rainer was involved in helping Jews escape Germany, among them German writer Bert Brecht.
Her personal life didn’t fare much better. After two years of separation, she officially divorced from her playwright husband Clifford Odets in 1940. They had married in 1937.
She did theater in Washington and filmed Hostages in 1943 before returning to Europe. In 1945, she married New York publisher Robert Knittel with whom she had a daughter, Francesca. Throughout the decades, Rainer would occasionally return to the stage or the movie set, but nothing close to a comeback.
Rainer and Knittel lived the rest of their lives in Switzerland and Britain, enjoying travel, books, music and climbing in the Alps. Rainer took up painting and had her own exhibition in London in 1978. Knittel died in 1989 and Rainer died in London on December 30, 2014 at the age of 104.
Recognition
Luise Rainer received the Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse (Order of Merit) in 1985 from Germany’s federal government.
In 2011, she received a star on the “Boulevard der Stars” in Berlin after being rejected by the jury. Her star was the 21st of that year (normally 20 are awarded) after music manager Paul DH Baylay started a campaign to honor Luise Rainer and her accomplishments.
A street in her hometown Düsseldorf was named “Luise-Rainer-Straße” in 2017.
Sources and Resources
- Wiki – Luise Rainer – dt
- Wiki – Luise Rainer – engl.
- New York Times – Obituary
- YouTube Playlist
- Ralf Oldenburg: Luise Rainer: Looking Back – Der Blick zurück, 2019. Only in German.
- An entire website dedicated to Luise Rainer. Information about her life, her movies, her friends (like Albert Einstein), her political involvement, her husbands, and many photos.
- Pesch, Martin, Luise Rainer, in: Internetportal Rheinische Geschichte, abgerufen unter: https://www.rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de/Persoenlichkeiten/luise-rainer/DE-2086/lido/5b3dd888820d91.89539085 (abgerufen am 29.12.2023)
- Francesca Knittel Bowyer: Seen from the Wings. Luise Rainer. My mother, The Journey, 2019
- Check YouTube and Amazon to rent any of her movies, not all are available.
- Netflix mini-series “Hollywood”
