Sunday night I was, as I am yearly on this day-of-days, curled up on my couch watching the Oscar telecast. The tradition was altered slightly this time, though quite positively, but that is the subject of a future post. The women and men gliding, strutting, finessing and charming their way down the red carpet and across the stage seemed, to my eyes, a different breed from times past, though the same beast. They were slim, glittering, glowing and as unflawed as perfect gems. There was not a genuine, gut-busting sartorial mis-step except, predictably, where it was expected: I am thinking of you as I type this, Mr. Rourke and Ms. Klum. They came, we saw and were, well, not a mote surprised by his disheveled anti-coif, dog-locket (RIP Loki), and sorry stand-in for a suit. Nor did we bat an eye over her stiffly structured, slightly wacky "Modernist-with-a-capital-M" gown. Even if it is a deviation from what everyone else is wearing, if it is expected, well, then, it's not really a risk, is it?
As I was watching everyone so thin, tanned and tall (although the latter is an illusion of the television cameras, to be sure), I couldn't help but wish that things were a bit messier, a bit less careful, a bit more truly glamorous. A bit more, say, 1929 or 1938. Back when it wasn't taken so seriously, when the women wore a celluloid patina but were, somehow, more individualistic, if only because they played to their own studio-enforced image.
Back then, during The Golden Age of Cinema that dwelt without conflict within the dark heart of the Great Depression, when you were different you were spectacularly different. A horde of publicity flacks couldn't hide it no matter how hard they tried or how much was at stake. That is your cue, Ms. Rainer.
Most people, if they have heard the name at all, are vaguely aware of only a fact or two about her. The first and most obvious being, that she is old. Very, very old. Fewer still may know that, at 99 years and 6 weeks, she is the oldest living Academy Award winner, having been the first to win two performance Oscars. Back-to-back. Take that, Spencer Tracy. Then there is, of course, the curse.
It doesn't exist but that hasn't stopped adherents of Schadenfreude from perpetuating that silliness for nearly 70 years. Her story is the origin of the belief that for many performers, winning an Oscar is career suicide. She blazed onto the Hollywood scene, fresh from the German stage, stooped to making movies, conquered the medium with her double-winning knockout before slinking off to oblivion a few short years later. That sounds more like the plot of a movie than real life.
Luise Rainer was a German-born stage actress, Reinhardt trained. To be Reinhardt-trained was to be seriously good at your craft, as he led all of Europe in stage-craft. She did eventually come to America, still in her twenties, getting her start opposite William Powell, among the cream of the MGM crop. She fell in love with leftist radical playwright Clifford Odets, whose life, character and plays were a particular obsession of my late teenage years. It was keenly unhappy, ending in divorce a few years later. She starred in a handful of big-budget, MGM critic's darlings, winning her statuettes for 'The Great Ziegfeld' (1937) and 'The Good Earth' (1938). The Hollywood career that started in 1935 was effectively over by 1938. She clashed with Louis B. Mayer and, to clash with the big man, while insisting on maintaining her privacy and outsider status, was her career suicide, not winning awards. She made a handful of film and television appearances post-1943 . She settled into a long second marriage which left her widowed 4 decades later.
She has also, over the years, made a handful of Academy Award-related appearances even though she does not, apparently, approve of the process. She was intensely talented and it is to Hollywood's shame and sure regret that it never bothered to showcase even a fraction of that talent. She was beautiful and graceful but did not care about her looks; she was stylish but did not care about trends or even what clothes she wore, yet wore them inexpressibly well, which somehow gives her a modern quality. She has lived a long life, most of it away from movie cameras and prying eyes. Yet she is still here, still fierce, still opinionated and always unapologetic for any mis-steps that she has taken. Mis-steps make a life, so why the hell not?
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