In the mid-90s Luise was ‘rediscovered’ as one of the last living stars of ‘Hollywood’s Golden Age’ and she was sought out by broadcasters and interviewers to reminisce about her time at MGM during her 1930s heyday. She was particularly in demand around the time of her return to film after 54 years in The Gambler (1997).
In that year she was interviewed by Harriet Gilbert for BBC Wolrdwide’s film programme On Screen. This interview is now available for the first time to listen to again on the BBC Sounds website. Click here to access this programme (Luise’s interview begins at 23:18).
Below you can read a full transcript of this interview.
Presenter: Mike Bullen [MB]
Interviewer: Harriet Gilbert [HG]
Interviewee: Luise Rainer [LR]
MB: Big stars do not audition for roles, they simply get offered them. There’s a story told about double Academy award winner, American actress Shelley Winters: In her later years she was called in to read for a part, she turned up, opened her bag and took out her two Oscars which she pointedly placed on the table in front of her saying, “You still want me to read?” They didn’t and she got the part. Luise Rainer is another member of that select band of actresses who won not one but two Academy Awards. Her first came in 1936 for The Great Ziegfeld, a year later she repeated this success in Irving Thalberg’s last great picture The Good Earth. But soon after she turned her back on Hollywood and retired from the movies. Now in her eighties Luise Rainer has been recalling those days for Harriet Gilbert and how she felt when ‘Oscar’ first smiled upon her for the role of the long-suffering wife of impresario ‘The Great Ziegfeld’.
LR: I tell you what I remember, I thought it was a bit funny. I came from one of the most marvellous theatres – the Reinhardt theatre. Reinhardt was a prince in the theatre and he was like Stanislawski in… in… in Russia. We were rewarded in as far as we were recognised as either gifted or not gifted and therefore we were able to get better or lesser parts, but this type of ‘reward’ was something foreign to me again and I was grateful that they thought I was good… but I expected of myself to be good, that was all.
HG: Can I ask you about your next film, The Good Earth?
LR: Yeah
HG: As a result of that movie you did something unprecedented at that point in Hollywood, you won a second Oscar; the second year running; the same woman to win Best Actress. Now, that is astonishing enough in itself but what has completely astonished people since is that within about a year, having made a number of other films, including one with Spencer Tracy, you abandoned Hollywood, never to go back to it to work. Why, Luise?
LR: One never knows really all one’s motives, but I think I never became an actress to be on a stage or to show myself. I wanted to be permitted to give something out that somehow was of some kind of value to others. But I was very disturbed by A: the quality of films I had to do, and secondly, I had a very disturbing private life with Clifford Odets (who was a playwright) and I could not handle the difficulty of being married to this extraordinary man plus a career that I did no more respect, and therefore I just felt I had to save myself, have to walk out. I had to decide between security and a secure home and being an object, like San Sebastian, though standing on a pedestal, that could be hit by arrows left, right, top and bottom… and that is what happens to you when you become famous.
MB: Double Academy Award winner Luise Rainer speaking to Harriet Gilbert.
Luise Rainer 