"Immortality Doesn't Last Forever": The Recently Discovered Memoirs of Luis Rainer

Oh Luise, did you make more than 2 movies?

You seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in both of them going squeamy meamy-meamy and blubbering and being rather boring with your squashed Austrian vowels.

You left and then we had a duplicate arrive named Elisabeth Bergner.

She was supposed to own the only print of "Escapade" (1936) with William Powell. I've been waiting since her death for it to show up, but it hasn't yet.

Garbo Laughs!

But Luis Rainer simpers.

Her surname is supposed to be pronounced to rhyme with 'Shriners', isn't it?

Forvo is your friend, R4.

Somehow I missed her in "Combat!".

^ His real name was Richard Jacobson and he shot himself in the year 2000.

[quote] Luis Rainer

She was trans?

How can this woman get two Oscars back to back and immediately become a hasbeen?

Why didn't anyone want to giver her a job anymore?

Lorna Luft gave a blurb for Luise's daughter's tell-all memoir:

“This is one of the those OMG! sort of stories...and it’s all true! A best-seller, for sure.” —Lorna Luft, Singer, Actress, Writer

[quote] How can this woman get two Oscars back to back and immediately become a hasbeen?

Beats me!

I liked the chapter in the new book where Luise describes eating a soft-boiled egg in 1997 and how she had one toast soldier left over.

Be Zzzhhholllly!

Hello, Flo?

Pretty pretty!

The Trailer!

^

So $2 for an expensive seat, how much for a cheap seat?

R17, you'd sit on the lap of a $2 seat-holder for a dollar, and the theater would split it with the lappee, 40/60 with some lap-dance moves during the good parts or 60/40 without.

R16 Luise Rainer plays someone called 'O-Lan' and 15 years later some pharmacists name their face cream 'Olan' and 'Ulan' and 'Ulay'.

Rainer in The Good Earth is the very worst performance to win an Oscar. Not Roberto Benigni or Mary Pickford or Liz (Butterfield, obviously, not Virginia Woolf) or Gwyneth (who wasn’t bad, it’s just that everyone hates her) or anyone else. It’s really that terrible.

It’s not just that she isn’t convincing playing Chinese. She isn’t even convincing playing humans.

R20 = Olivia de Havilland

R20 I saw 'The Good Earth' decades ago and even then it seemed crass and hokey and somehow 'wrong'.

The same writer went on to do 'Dragon Seed' which must be one of Kate's most embarrassing performances.

I’ve seen both movies, and they are both terrible. But as bad as Hepburn is (it’s easily her worst performance), she can at least fall back on the sheer force of her personality. Rainer was an odd, recessive presence, so that was never an option for her. And it means her failure, unlike Hepburn’s, isn’t even interesting. It’s just sad and odd-putting.

With the advent of WW2, foreign accents fell out of favor.

I get confused between Pearl S.Buck and Edna Ferber because they both produced over-long, middle-brow and middle-class pulp fiction.

But one was actually born in China and the other was a lesbian.

Luise wouldn't even comb her hair.

[quote] Rainer was an odd, recessive presence.

She will never be named as a "gay icon" or a "DL Fave".

"Luis" Rainer, who's that? Luise Rainer's twin Hispanic brother?

I stole your husband, bitch!

[quote] She will never be named as a "gay icon" or a "DL Fave".

She was a DL fave for years.

I always thought that facially Rainer resembled Meryl Streep...

R31 - like in OP's pic?

I took the OP's advice and went to the bookstore to get a copy of "Immortality Doesn't Last Forever".

They said 'What?'.

I said it was the memoirs of the famous movie star Luise Rainer.

They said 'Who?'.

She looks like Sir Paul McCartney

[quote] She looks like Sir Paul McCartney

Not anymore.

Did she live in some humble LA bungalow for 60 years before going home to die? I wonder?

[quote]Did she live in some humble LA bungalow for 60 years before going home to die? I wonder?

Yeah, the bungalow smells like old woman.

The Good Earth is bad, and her acting is kind of broad. But she does have a very expressive face and I found her watchable (she's better in Ziegfeld but it's more a supporting performance).

Don't even recall seeing her in much else. She has a nervy, twitchy, Shelley Duvall-esque presence to her. I feel as though she would have given better performances in the silent era.

For years Madame would DP herself with both Oscars while singing "Hooray for Hollywood."