Short Biography

Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany into a prosperous Jewish family. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a young actress, she was discovered by the legendary theater director Max Reinhardt and became part of his company in Vienna, Austria. "I was supposed to be very gifted, and he heard about me. He wanted me to be part of his theater," Rainer recounted in a 1997 interview. She joined Reinhardt`s theatrical company in Vienna and spent years developing as an actress under his tutelage. As part of Reinhardt`s company, Rainier became a popular stage actress in Berlin and Vienna in the early 1930s. Rainer was a natural talent for Reinhardt`s type of staging, which required an impressionistic acting style. Rainer, who made her screen debut as a teenager and appeared in three other German-language films in the early `30s, terminated her European career when the Austrian Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in Germany. With his vicious anti-Semitism, his imposition of a police state in Germany, and his desire for an anschluss between Austria and "Der Vaterland," Hitler was a threat to European Jewry. Rainer had been spotted by a talent scout, who offered her a seven-year contract with the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The 25-year-old Rainer took the deal and emigrated to the United States. She made her American debut in the movie Escapade (1935), replacing Myrna Loy, who was originally slated for the part. It was her luck to have William Powell as her co-star in her first Hollywood film, as he mentored her, teaching her how to act in front of the camera. Powell, whom Rainer remembers as "a dear man" and "a very fine person," lobbied M.G.M. boss Louis B. Mayer, reportedly telling him, "You`ve got to star this girl or I`ll look like an idiot.`" During the making of "Escapade," Rainer met, and fell in love with, the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, then at the height of his fame. They were married in 1937. It was not a happy union. M.G.M. cast Rainer in support of Powell in the title role of the The Great Ziegfeld (1936), its spectacular bio-epic featuring musical numbers that recreated his "Follies" shows on Broadway. As Anna Held, Ziegfeld`s common-law wife, Rainier excelled in the musical numbers, but it is for her telephone scene that she is most remembered for. "The Great Ziegfeld" was a big hit and went on to win the Academy Award as Best Picture of 1936. Rainer received her first of two successive Best Actress Oscars for playing Held. The award was highly controversial at the time as she was a relative unknown and it only her first nomination, but also because her role was so short and relatively minor that it better qualified for a supporting nomination. (While 1936 was the first year that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored supporting players, her studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, listed her as a lead player, then got out its block vote for her.) Compounding the controversy was the fact that Rainer beat out such better known and more respected actresses as Carole Lombard (her sole Oscar nomination) in My Man Godfrey (1936), previous Best Actress winner Norma Shearer (her fifth nomination) in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and Irene Dunne (her second of five unsuccessful nominations) in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). Some of the bitchery was directed towards Louis B. Mayer, whom non-M.G.M. Academy members resented

Miscellaneous Information

Friends and Family

Oona Chaplin [Friend]

Paulette Goddard [Friend]

Erich Maria Remarque [Friend]

Erich Von Stroheim [Friend]

Charlie Chaplin [Friend]

Katherine Ann Porter [Friend]

Francesca Knittel-Bowyer [Mother]

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