Obituaries

Hollywood Actress Luise Rainer Dies at 104

Ex-wife to Clifford Odets, Rainer was the first actress ever to win back-to-back Oscars.

Broadway veteran and legendary Oscar winner Luise Rainer has died at 104.
Broadway veteran and legendary Oscar winner Luise Rainer has died at 104.

Hollywood film star Luise Rainer, best known as the first actress ever to earn back-to-back Academy Awards, died of pneumonia at her home in London. She was 104 years old.

Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, on January 12, 1910, Rainer began training with Austrian stage director Max Reinhardt at the age of 16 and earned recognition as a "distinguished Berlin stage actress." She later signed a three-year contract with MGM, which brought her to Hollywood in 1935. She earned her first Oscar in 1936 for her small role in the musical biopic The Great Ziegfeld, followed by a second Oscar win in 1937 for her dramatic performance as a Chinese farm wife in The Good Earth, based on Pearl Buck's novel about hardship in China. Her back-to-back accolades made her the first person to ever win multiple Academy Awards. She is joined by only Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Jason Robards, and Tom Hanks as actors who won in consecutive years.

She abruptly ended her film career after only three years, returning to Europe in 1938. She had married playwright Clifford Odets in 1937 and moved to New York City to live with him, though she had filed for divorce in mid-1938. Their divorce was finalized on May 14, 1940.

Rainer appeared in several stage productions in both Europe and the U.S. following her film career. She made her first appearance at the Palace Theatre, in Manchester, England, on May 1, 1939, as Françoise in Jacques Deval's play Behold the Bride, and made her London debut at the Shaftesbury Theatre on May 23, 1939, in the same part. After returning to America in 1940, she played the leading part in George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C., under the direction of German emigrant director Erwin Piscator. She then made her Broadway debut in March 1942 at the Music Box Theatre as Miss Thing in J.M. Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella and returned to Broadway a second and final time in 1950 in Henrik Ibsen's The Lady From the Sea.

Rainer remarried in 1944 to publisher Robert Knittel and remained with him until his death in 1989. She is survived by their daughter, Francesca Knittel-Bowyer.