LMU Of Munich Film Professor Lupino’s Possibly Interesting Facts on Luise Rainer

1.  Luise Rainer was born January 12, 1910 in Düsseldorf, Germany into a jewish family

2.  Luise Rainer was discovered by legendary stage director Max Reinhardt and became a member of his company in Vienna, Austria. She became a well known stage actress in both Vienna and Berlin.

3.  Luise Rainer made her film debut in 1932, in the German/Austrian co-production Desire 202 (referring to a perfume) and followed this with 2 more films before being discovered by a talent scout and being offered a seven year contract by MGM.  Since the Nazi regime was already becoming a strong force, Rainer ended her European career and left for Hollywood.

4.  Won her 2 Oscars for her second and third American movie.

5. Claimed to have based her tour de force performance in the famous telephone scene in The Great Ziegfeld on Cocteau’s one woman play La Voix Humaine/The Human Voice.

6.  Preferred her performance of O Lan to anything she had done during her Hollywood career and was full of praise for director Sidney Franklin

7.  Married famous playwrite Clifford Odets in 1937 (divorced 1940).

8.  Named Melvyn Douglas as her favorite leading man

9.  After the death of Irving Thalberg, who shared a lot of her artistic visions, she constantly clashed with Louis B. Mayer, who was more interested in beautiful people than beautiful performances to grace his pictures. After threatening to kill her career if she remained difficult once too often, Rainer walked out of her contract and left Hollywood for good.

10. Returned once for one Paramount movie in 1943, then, like Dietrich, joined the war effort, touring North Africa and Italy, boosting the morale of soldiers there.

11.  Found lasting happiness in her second marriage (1945 to 1989, her husband’s death)

12. Was offered movie roles during her long absence from the screen, most notably in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, but argued with the director about a “sex scene” of sorts she was supposed to act out with Marcello Mastroianni and finally withdrew despite her admiration for the director.

13.  Lived in Switzerland and later in London, was in good health until the age of 102, made a “small comeback” in The Gambler in 1997 and was widely praised for her performance. She was a frequent and whitty guest on TV shows, impressing viewers with her sharp memory and funny remarks like “I spent my 90th birthday swimming in the dead sea, injecting some life into it”.

14.  Luise Rainer died December 30, 2014 in Belgravia, London, at the age of 104.

15. Check out Luise Rainer‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

LMU of Munich Professor Lupino’s thoughts on Luise Rainer:

“I feel that her O Lan role in 1937’s The Good Earth is one of the finest screen creations I have seen to date, and as most of you know, I have seen quite a few movies in my lifetime. Yet, I do have my reservations about her overall thespian talents as captured on film.

I watched only my fourth LR movie over the weekend and this one proved what I already suspected- Miss Rainer may only be second to Bette Davis when it comes to falling back on mannerisms. Strangely, these mannerisms are highly effective when viewed in one film, but seem to show quite a limited range when witnessed in film after film.

What am I talking about? Her delicate beauty and elfin appearance seem to be inevitably partnered with that faint, whispering voice, soulfull eyes always ready to fill with tears and that Rainer giggle, trying to hide the tears when in fact it is nothing but a showcase for her shaken emotional state. As I said already, I have only seen 3 movies apart from The Good Earth, so maybe I am too harsh in my judgement. But I felt that in both, The Great Waltz and Dramatic School, those mannerisms almost detached her from the other players, as if Rainer’s character existed in a parallel world to everyone else.

Maybe like Davis she needed a good director to keep her acting tricks at bay, or maybe, as she often claimed herself, she didn’t understand what was going on in her films and thus didn’t really know what else to do with her part. Seeing her as O Lan and knowing that the great Max Reinhardt as well as Clifford Odets were taken in by her acting chops, I tend to believe that Rainer and Hollywood simply was a miss-match. Would love to see more of her movies, but haven’t been lucky yet.

What I love about the stats here is that they prove that her movies were not box office duds and thus killing her career prematurely as I have read quite often. Her 8 MGM films brought in over a billion $, and only 2 failed to reach the 100 million $ mark domestically. No Davis, Hepburn, Stanwyck or Garbo had such a “run” in the mid 30’s.

My favorite Luise Rainer films are The Good Earth and The Great Ziegfeld, and although neither The Great Waltz nor Dramatic School are anywhere close to my favorite movies, they are entertaining enough for various reasons.”