Luise Rainer: The Great, the Good, and the Gone

Luise Rainer in Hollywood

In the 1930s, Greta Garbo was the apotheosis of glamour and beauty. The Swedish movie star had a languidness, allure, and mystery that audiences at the time found irresistible. And because Hollywood knows how to imitate past success (or at least try), it’s no surprise that studios of the era searched Europe for “The Next Garbo.”

So from Italy came Elissa Landi; from France, Annabella; from Russia, Anna Sten. The studios tried their hardest to herald these and other women as “The Next Garbo.” (Even Katharine Hepburn was billed as “The American Garbo” when she hit the Hollywood scene in 1932.)

Almost none of these European imports made much of an impact on audiences, or if they did, it was short-lived. Their careers evaporated by the end of the decade.

But of all those Garbo imitations, Luise Rainer, an import from Austria, was perhaps the most interesting flame-out ever.

I write about her in this blog post because she passed away on December 31st at the ripe old age of 104, one of the last links to Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the 1930s. (The only other survivor that comes to mind is Olivia de Havilland, who will be 100 next year.)

She was brought to MGM to make the film “Escapade” in 1935. Co-starring the hugely popular William Powell, Rainer was a sensation; she had a freshness and vitality that was distinctly her own. She was much more alive on screen than Garbo ever was, and the studio played up her big, expressive eyes and charming personality.

Rainer accepts her first Oscar,
trademark tousled hair and all.

She had talent, too, so with the success of “Escapade,” she could only go up. Her next feature was “The Great Ziegfeld” in 1936, again opposite Powell. The film concerned the dramatic life of 1900s theatrical producer Florenz Ziegfeld. Rainer was cast as his first wife, the stage star Anna Held.

The studio promoted Rainer massively, and she won an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance. This prestige got her cast in MGM's biggest epic ever the following year.

In the studio's big-budget adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s novel “The Good Earth,” about Chinese peasants, Rainer brought a quiet sensitivity and dignity to her characterization as O-Lan, the long-suffering wife. To modern audiences, it may seem strange that an Austrian woman would be cast as a Chinese peasant, but in the 1930s and 1940s, it was not unusual for white actors to be cast as Asians. (Think of Charlie Chan.) The modern perspective notwithstanding, Rainer was brilliant, and won the Oscar for Best Actress, her second in a row.

But Hollywood and its incessant promotion didn’t suit her. Subsequent film roles didn’t require her to do much, and the films were consistently mediocre, despite being cast opposite such big names as Spencer Tracy and Melvyn Douglas (and one more time with William Powell). She constantly clashed with MGM’s head Louis B. Mayer, which probably didn’t do her career any favors.

It’s sort of movie lore that Oscar winners’ careers sometimes veer tragically off-course (unless you’re Meryl Streep). But Luise Rainer is probably the text book version of that theory.

By 1938, Rainer had had enough of Hollywood, and my guess is that MGM had had enough of her. She walked away, and a white-hot career was over within three years.

She even looked a little like Meryl Streep.

Unhappily married to the playwright Clifford Odets, she tried to make a comeback in 1943, playing in the B-grade war film “Hostages” at a different studio. But it wasn’t enough; the film was not good or successful, and no one seemed to care that she was back after a five-year hiatus.

Plus, things had changed too much. America was at war, and the war had effectively put an end to the exotic European female aesthetic in Hollywood. (Indeed, Garbo saw the writing on the wall and retired in 1941.) Europe became not so much the source of beautiful women, but of international strife. Audiences wanted more relatable American types, like Ginger Rogers, Donna Reed, or June Allyson.

“Hostages” was Rainer’s last mainstream Hollywood film. But she still must have had a desire to go before a camera, for she made sporadic television appearances from 1949 to 1954 on such early product-sponsored live television broadcasts as Lux Video Theatre and Schlitz Playhouse. After that, she had exactly three TV roles: In 1965 on “Combat!”; in 1984 on “The Love Boat”; and in 1991 on a Swiss television series.

But nothing on film, until she took a small part as The Grandmother in an obscure British film called “The Gambler” in 1997—at age 86. (One wonders if Gloria Stuart’s return to the screen that year in “Titanic,” playing the 87-year-old Rose, had any influence on Rainer’s desire to come back to the big screen after 54 years.)

Luise Rainer is not a name that many people recognize today. But she is significant for being the first actor to win the Best Actress Oscar two years in a row. She is also the greatest case of a career implosion from that era—someone who got the huge Hollywood build-up but couldn’t handle the Hollywood way, and eventually left it all behind.

Kudos to Rainer for living to such a ripe old age, and seemingly doing so with grace and style. For fans of classic film, she possessed a mystique as one of the last surviving vestiges of the Golden Age of Hollywood, a time that is quickly being consigned to history rather than the memory of those who lived it.