Luise Rainer

Luise Rainer0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an actress. She horrified her father by leaving home to go on the stage when she was 16 years old. She worked with Max Reinhardt, was spotted by a talent scout, and went to Hollywood, where she enjoyed a spectacular, if short, career. She made nine films, won two Oscars, and then left in disgust. A couple of years ago, after 54 years away from the screen, she got a small but important role in a film called The Gambler. The memories of her distinguished career came flooding back, and many say she stole the show. Now in her late eighties, she can say of her life, I never acted, I just felt everything. Love played the biggest part. She is Louisa Reiner.

Presenter1:12

You were you are, Louisa, then, a completely natural actress, are you? You just feel it and you can do it.

Presenter1:20

Well, it's inside. I was born with it. I guess I

Presenter1:25

It's something that wouldn't get lost because it's not put on. It has to come from inside out. And when I just did this last film, it came out to the surprise of everybody. Weren't you nervous? It was so easy and so natural. You weren't nervous for one moment. Not at all. No, not at all.

Luise Rainer1:39

Uh

Speaker 41:39

And it was so easy.

Luise Rainer1:42

You weren't

Luise Rainer1:43

Maybe not.

Presenter1:46

I just hopped into it, that's all. But you play a a a Russian matriarch who comes to the roulette table in her wheelchair and goes mad, betting on zero. She's fixated by the zero. What it meant, of course, was that the camera was tight on your face for the your reactions to the the the the wheel spinning and the ball falling whether you'd won whether you'd lost. That's the most difficult thing of all, isn't it, really? No, no, I don't know anything about that.

Luise Rainer1:57

Yeah.

Luise Rainer2:09

No, I don't know, I don't know anything.

Presenter2:12

Um I don't know about camera, I I I do it.

Presenter2:16

And I don't know what I do. I'm not aware if they make a close-up or if it's a long shot or whatever it is.

Presenter2:25

It has to come from inside out, that's all. How did it differ as an experience from Hollywood in the thirties? Was it less starry? Was it a less glamorous business?

Luise Rainer2:33

It's a less glamorous business.

Presenter2:36

Work is work.

Presenter2:38

We were working girls, that's all, you said. But you were required to be, I think, by um Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM.

Speaker 42:40

But you

Presenter2:47

Very docile and very obedient, which you never were, were you?

Presenter2:52

I don't know if I was or not. I maybe I was a perfectionist or something and uh I

Presenter3:00

I didn't feel that I was a beauty or anything like that. I didn't care about the money I made. It didn't matter to me. And all those standards, which were standards of Hollywood, were not my standards. And somehow I felt I didn't fit in. I didn't fit in. I mean, they didn't know what to do with me. They also said I think she's difficult to manage. Didn't you once have a huge row with Maya when you told him he hadn't hired a cat in a trail?

Luise Rainer3:23

Play also

Luise Rainer3:30

He hadn't hired a cat in a circ.

Presenter3:32

It was a very quiet row. Um I felt after three years I was very unhappy.

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I had a very difficult marriage.

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And

Presenter3:44

this enormous career because I made these two Academy Awards within three years.

Presenter3:50

And it was very difficult and I wanted to get away from it all, to save myself. I felt I had to. I had to get away from it all.

Presenter3:59

And uh the word go went around and Louis B. Meier heard of it and he asked me to come to what was called at the time the front office. And I went there and Louis B. Maier said to me, I understand you're going to leave us.

Presenter4:16

And I said, Yes, Mr. Mayor, my souls is dried out.

Presenter4:22

So he looked at me, and said, What do you need a source for? Don't you have a director?

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I thought, oh my God.

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I can't talk to that man.

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And then he said

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You know we made you and we are going to kill you.

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And I stared at him, and I said, Mr Meir,

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God meet me.

Presenter4:44

And I walked out.

Luise Rainer4:44

And that will

Presenter4:46

Mm, what a wonderful part.

Presenter4:48

Tell me about your first record.

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I had the good fortune of knowing

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Girls went very well.

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He he I think he liked me. He di he wasn't in love with me or anything, but he liked me very much and he said that uh

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I was part of that Europe that he wanted to he wanted to be like Mozart, Beethoven, he wanted to write great music, great symphonies and everything. And anyway, he played and he composed in my house and uh it was in the evenings and I would uh go to sleep with his music playing below and uh then he would quietly leave my house and then very often come back and do the same.

Presenter6:26

Oscar Levant and the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra playing part of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F and memories of Gershwin for my castaway Louisa Reiner.

Presenter6:36

You had won two Oscars, Louisa. The first was uh for the great Siegfeldt in nineteen thirty six, which was a musical biography of of Siegfeld, the great man himself, and you played one of his wives. You actually wrote the scene that really made you famous, didn't you?

Luise Rainer6:51

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 46:51

What

Presenter6:54

Yes, I stole it.

Presenter6:56

I didn't.

Presenter6:57

Yes, I write the scene wrote the scene. But Cocteau, the French writer, the French poet, wrote a wonderful piece called Voi U Main, the Human Voice. And there is a woman who's on the telephone talking to her beloved and who's leaving her. And that gave me the idea. And it was you weeping on the telephone, that you just heard that Siegfeld had married somebody else. And you put the phone down and.

Luise Rainer7:26

Yeah.

Presenter7:31

burst into tears, but you do it very beautifully. And you got the Oscar. The second one you got for hardly speaking at all, really, I think. That was the Good Earth in 1937. When I got the Good Earth.

Luise Rainer7:38

Yeah.

Luise Rainer7:39

In nineteen thirty-seven.

Presenter7:42

Solberg was still alive, he was a great, great producer and a wonderful man.

Presenter7:50

And um he he made me do this part and I thought I'm going to be awful. I'm going to be the greatest bore because the part is the part of a a little Chinese female that is a slave. She's a slave and uh she became strong.

Presenter8:11

Somehow.

Presenter8:13

And it was very funny because I had never been in China until about ten years ago. And when I went to China,

Presenter8:22

I looked around and I thought Ooh, they all look like me

Presenter8:28

And you've got a second Oscar for it. Have you you've still got your Oscars, have you? Oh, yes. I well.

Presenter8:34

Yes, I got one old one and one new one because um one of them got battle fatigue and bent over or something. You know, they're not real, they're not gold or anything like that. I don't know, it was certainly bent. So the Academy in Hollywood sent me a new one and he's much taller. So I have one short and one long one. But how do you react to them up there on the shelf? Do you look at them from time to time and glow with pride or are they no pride? Well what do they mean to you? What do they mean to you these days?

Luise Rainer9:04

Well, what do they mean?

Presenter9:08

Nothing has passed.

Presenter9:12

The spouse.

Presenter9:14

Tell me about your second record.

Presenter9:16

And

Presenter9:18

When they uh called me to come to Hollywood and I thought, well, this is all mad. I was on the stage with Reinhardt, I was part of a wonderful group.

Presenter9:30

And I made no conditions. I only made one single condition. It was.

Presenter9:35

that I was permitted to bring my dog with me, my little Scotty dog. He wasn't quite elegant, he was a little bit uh lower class, he could lift one ear and the other one got stuck. And on the boat nearby were two gentlemen sitting, one very tall and one very short.

Presenter9:56

And you know the purser always takes your passer uh passport away, and therefore they know all your dates. And one lunch I opened the the um menu, and there it says birthday luncheon for Louise Rainer.

Presenter10:13

Couldn't believe it. It was incredible. Here I was, nothing, nothing. Birthday luncheon for Louis Rana.

Presenter10:22

And on that table where these two men were, one of them was Shawlyapin, and the other one was Michael Elman, the famous, then famous violinist.

Presenter10:34

And Chalyapin sang happy birthday for me.

Presenter10:38

And of course it was wonderful, this great, great, great man, this Basso, and I would love to hear a record by him.

Speaker 410:56

Be alright.

Speaker 411:17

Yes, for our sil, kakim kuchom, yazas matriam non.

Speaker 411:32

How much of a

Speaker 411:37

Kark Moina Sidni Kaksin Moi Garland.

Presenter11:47

Fyodor Shaliarpin as Boris Goodenough singing part of his farewell prayer from Act Four of Mazorgsky's opera Boris Goodenough, recorded at Covent Garden in nineteen twenty eight.

Presenter11:58

Of course you'd been on your own for some time by then,'cause you'd left home at sixteen. Why was your father so horrified by that? What did he say?

Presenter12:07

Well

Presenter12:09

He felt uh an actress uh was uh something to be seen from afar, but not within the family. So did you effectively have to choose between home and the theatre? If you were going to follow your star into the theatre, you had to leave home, did you? Yes, I I went I went off.

Luise Rainer12:29

But how did you

Presenter12:29

But how did you exist? What did you live on? I was immediately accepted as an actress without ever being into any school or anything. But what did you live on? Did you earn enough money to eat? Well, they gave me a tiny salary, and I felt absolutely wonderful. I lived on that. And then also I went to nearby Grefeld, where my grandfather had a very Freudal, enormous house. And I would take the apples there. And then at the end of the garden was a mews then and the chauffeur would live there and he had some chickens. And so I would go to him and get some eggs and I would practically live on apples and eggs for a long time. And how did you meet Max Reinhardt?

Luise Rainer12:40

But what did

Luise Rainer12:43

Yeah.

Luise Rainer12:58

Yeah.

Luise Rainer13:21

And how

Presenter13:24

He heard of me in the Zudorf and he sent for me.

Presenter13:28

And um uh I had an audition with them in Berlin.

Presenter13:33

Of course they paid for my trip and I went there and I had an audition and uh

Presenter13:41

And he immediately offered me uh to be part of his theater. And you quickly made a reputation for yourself,'cause you toured Europe. Very fast. Everyone thought you were. And you did very big parts all the time. And you toured with Pirandello in six actors in search of an author.

Luise Rainer13:48

Yeah.

Luise Rainer13:50

Let's

Luise Rainer13:51

You are wonderful.

Luise Rainer13:55

Six actors in search of an author.

Presenter13:58

Yeah, in 1934 we toured with Pirandello and course that was a great uh experience. But Reinhardt himself, he was such a fantastic man. He was a prince, he was a real prince, he was an aristocrat from inside out. He wasn't uh an aristocrat by birth, he was

Presenter14:20

An extraordinary man and a great artist.

Presenter14:24

Next piece of music.

Presenter14:27

Uh it is the Moonlight Sonata.

Presenter14:30

It's actually my very first experience.

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My mother was a very beautiful pianist and

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My first memory actually is.

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I was lying.

Presenter14:49

a bundle under her grand piano and I was sobbing my heart out, crying, crying, crying.

Presenter14:58

And

Presenter15:00

It was very strange because she was above me playing.

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And the sounds were so inc incredible.

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And I behaved like a puppy dog.

Presenter15:12

Hearing church bells, I don't know what it was, anyway it moved me to tears.

Presenter16:21

Artur Rubinstein playing the opening of Beethoven's piano sonata No. fourteen, the Moonlight Sonata.

Presenter16:28

Now, Louisa, you were in Berlin on tour in nineteen thirty three and I believe you saw the Reichstag burning down. Yes, I did. Tell me about that.

Luise Rainer16:36

Jeff said.

Luise Rainer16:37

I did and it was

Presenter16:40

I was called to um do a play there, and I was called by a producer of another great theater who wanted to do Caesar and Cleopatra.

Presenter16:52

And um

Presenter16:53

I came there and I sat in his office and he had very, very long windows, and I saw a column of black going up to the sky, and I kind of slowly lifted myself to see what was going on there.

Presenter17:09

And

Presenter17:10

The producer, his name was Barnowski,

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He said

Presenter17:15

What are you looking at?

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From what I was looking at

Presenter17:22

Was a rice stack burning?

Presenter17:26

Mm.

Presenter17:27

He said, amazingly, he said, You have no business.

Presenter17:33

to look out there.

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You're an artist and you should think of your work.

Presenter17:40

And do you know that this producer, four weeks later,

Presenter17:44

He was dead.

Presenter17:47

He was beaten to death. Because he was Jewish. Yeah.

Presenter17:51

What did your family what did your father think about Hitler? Do you remember? Well my father uh was against Hitler.

Speaker 417:59

Yeah.

Presenter17:59

Hmm. And um he um

Presenter18:03

Made it known.

Presenter18:05

And the Germans.

Presenter18:07

captured him

Presenter18:10

Because he was anti-Nazi.

Presenter18:15

And he came into one of those concentration camps. But he survived in the end, didn't he? Oh, yes, of course he survived. He came to America. He my parents lived in America.

Presenter18:28

Tell me about your fourth record. After I left Hollywood I lived in New York and um I met Toscanini.

Presenter18:39

And I don't know how it uh happened, but um he was very kind to me, of both of course.

Presenter18:47

old gentleman, or much, much, much, much older, but he was uh very very kind. And um anyway, I was at the music festival in Luxembourg.

Presenter19:00

In Toscanini.

Presenter19:02

Was there, and we were all staying at the same hotel. And there was a loudspeaker.

Presenter19:10

And Hitler screamed through that loudspeaker said

Presenter19:15

We are marching into Poland.

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And it was the beginning of the war.

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And that night

Presenter19:27

I went to a beautiful church in Luserne.

Presenter19:34

Where does Canini play it?

Presenter19:37

Verde's requirement.

Presenter20:31

Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra with the Robert Shaw Chorale performing part of the Lacrymosa from Verdi's Requiem.

Presenter20:40

You have met so many people, Louisa, in your life. It it does seem to me because Hollywood wasn't particularly to your liking, you weren't, as you put it yourself, a glamour puss, you were something else, you mixed with all sorts of um intellectuals and musicians.

Luise Rainer20:54

The news is

Presenter20:56

Too numerous to mention. You've mentioned Gershwin, there was Schoenberg, there was Brecht, there was Thomas Mann. What was Einstein like? Oh, Einstein.

Luise Rainer21:00

Yeah.

Speaker 421:00

Here's Thomas Mann.

Presenter21:06

Yeah.

Presenter21:07

I met him and and

Luise Rainer21:08

Uh

Presenter21:11

Well, to me he talked about very simple things.

Presenter21:15

You didn't talk about the theory of relativity.

Luise Rainer21:17

Do you know?

Presenter21:18

I would never understood a word. No, of course not. He was yeah, he played the he played the fiddle, the fiddle. He he didn't play so very wonderful, but he played violin and what about Thomas Mann?

Presenter21:35

What about Thomas Mann? I don't want to say what I thought about Thomas Mann.

Presenter21:41

I said something terrible because but he was f quite marvellous he was marvellous but I always said he reminded me of a pencil with ears, because there was something very wooden.

Presenter21:57

About him and lengthy and then on top of it he listened, listened, listened. He talked very little. And um, Bettel Prescht?

Presenter22:09

Well Brecht wrote a play for me, The Caucasian Circle of Short.

Presenter22:15

And it was actually I who gave him the idea for it.

Presenter22:21

Uh he came to my house and he said he wanted to write a play for me and I went with him on a walk along the ocean.

Presenter22:33

And we discussed it and I said, Well, of course everybody like every man wants to play Hamlet, so every actress would like to play St. Joan, but I've played St. Joan already. But there's another play that I'm very, very fond of. But

Presenter22:51

It has to be reworked, and it is Klabunz.

Presenter22:58

Um circle of shock, a Kreidekrais in German, a circle of shock.

Presenter23:05

And yeah.

Presenter23:07

Brecht looked at me and he said

Presenter23:10

But for heaven's sake!

Presenter23:13

I give.

Presenter23:15

Clubund the idea?

Presenter23:17

And he wanted to rewrite it and write it for me. But you never played it? No.

Presenter23:23

Why not?

Presenter23:26

I didn't want to work with Bright.

Presenter23:29

Why not?

Presenter23:31

I didn't like him.

Presenter23:34

Next piece of music.

Presenter23:36

This is my husband, Clifford Odess.

Presenter23:40

Who sent me?

Presenter23:42

The Seventh Symphony.

Presenter23:45

And he said, listen to it, listen to it carefully.

Presenter23:51

It's

Presenter23:52

What do you mean to me?

Presenter24:49

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. seven, played by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, and Memories for my castaway Louisa Reiner of her first husband, Clifford Odetz, the passion of your life, Clifford Odetz, the radical playwright.

Presenter25:06

How did you meet him? Did he sweep you off your feet? It was thunderbolt love, wasn't it?

Presenter25:11

Well, how did I meet him?

Presenter25:13

Um

Presenter25:15

I was with Gershwin and with Harold Arlen, who wrote Night and Day and Stormy Weather and all kinds of beautiful songs. And we were sitting together and suddenly there was great silence and um somebody had come in and everybody looked towards the door and

Presenter25:34

He knew Gerthwin and

Presenter25:37

Gertrude asked him to sit down, and he sat next to me.

Presenter25:41

And

Presenter25:42

They were talking about all kinds of things. Odetz never looked at me.

Presenter25:48

I felt I can't explain what I felt. I felt something.

Presenter25:53

It was like a burn.

Presenter25:57

And

Presenter25:57

I moved my chair a little bit away from him.

Presenter26:02

And then he turned his head and he looked at me.

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Big grey eyes.

Presenter26:13

And you and you.

Presenter26:18

But it was a wild relation it was a compelling relationship.

Presenter26:23

Yeah, it was immovable.

Presenter26:25

Passionate.

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The most frenetic.

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The most wonderful but ultimately tragic.

Presenter26:34

It I know I'm lying when I say the most wonderful because

Presenter26:39

My later husband.

Presenter26:42

was incredible.

Presenter26:45

And so I c I cannot I cannot say the was the most wonderful. It was fulfilling, it was terrible, it was tearing, it was

Presenter27:02

Complete. But he wanted you, as I understand it, to be his slave. He wanted you as a housefrau, didn't he? Yes. He uh wanted me to be.

Presenter27:11

Eleonora Dooser, the greatest actress, only claimed that I was Dooser of our time.

Presenter27:19

And he wanted me to be a little house front as well. I couldn't make the two together. But when you finally left, when you had the the argument you've talked about with with um Louis B. Meyer, and your marriage this marriage to Adettes was on the rocks as well, and you finally turned your back on Hollywood,

Presenter27:39

M

Presenter27:40

It must have ta you were barely thir you weren't thirty. It must have taken enormous strength of mind, strength of character, really, to just throw it all out. It was difficult. Yes. My my so called career had gone up, up, up, up and my private life had gone down, down, down.

Luise Rainer27:48

Throw it all in.

Presenter27:59

And I was too young to handle that. It was very difficult. And I had to flee, and I did.

Presenter28:09

and I went back to Europe.

Presenter28:11

Tell me about your next record.

Presenter28:13

Clifford had an opening of a new play.

Presenter28:18

And she didn't want me to come.

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And I was very sad.

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And I was in New York.

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And I'll pass the Algonquin Hotel.

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In a car stop.

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And out of it jumped

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A very tall dark woman

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And she passed me and I looked at her, and looking at her

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Out of my mouth it came

Presenter28:45

Marian Anderson.

Presenter28:49

Tuscanini had called it the greatest contralto of our century.

Presenter28:56

And she looked at me and she said, Louise Reiner.

Presenter29:03

It was ridiculous.

Presenter29:06

But she had obviously seen me in films or something.

Presenter29:11

And we sat together.

Presenter29:13

And she even sang one song for me.

Speaker 429:33

Who's there?

Presenter29:42

Marion Anderson singing the Negro Spiritual Crucifixion accompanied by Frantz Rupp and that was recorded in nineteen forty one.

Presenter29:50

You've had so many adventures, Louisa too numerous to recount here, but helping children escape from the Spanish Civil War.

Presenter29:58

With a group that included Hemingway, travelling Europe with and for Mrs. Roosevelt, more love affairs. Mrs Hemingway, of course. Of course. And.

Luise Rainer30:04

The finance.

Presenter30:07

You then met the man with whom you were to spend the next forty-five years, Robert Knittle, a publisher.

Luise Rainer30:13

Yeah.

Presenter30:15

Was it was it Thunderbolt Love again, did you feel no burn?

Luise Rainer30:15

Was it

Luise Rainer30:18

No, bad.

Presenter30:19

I was at a party and

Presenter30:21

Yeah.

Presenter30:23

He told me later on I wore a red dress and he said my nose was as red as my dress because I had a bad cold.

Presenter30:34

But he told a friend of his, I'm going to marry her.

Presenter30:40

And then it was an eleven months battle.

Presenter30:45

But he persuaded you, he won you in the end.

Luise Rainer30:45

But he persuaded you.

Presenter30:48

He wrote into my diary july twelfth, which was our wedding day.

Presenter30:54

He wrote into Mandarin on July twelfth, he just made it. He made it. He had a tenacity like nobody else I ever met.

Presenter31:04

Record number seven.

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He was a mountain climber.

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And he also taught me how to climb mountains.

Presenter31:13

Robert, my husband, went with the fiddle up to the matterhorn, and on the top of the matterhorn he played a bach sonata.

Presenter32:27

Sandor Weig playing part of the second movement of Bach's sonata number one in G major.

Presenter32:32

Do you think you might be persuaded again? Are you going to do another film? Um yes, I have a certain

Presenter32:40

film and with certain book on my mind.

Presenter32:43

For many years already.

Presenter32:46

And I hope very much to do it.

Luise Rainer32:46

Mm-hmm.

Presenter32:50

Yeah.

Presenter32:50

You're gonna tell me what it is? No.

Presenter32:53

In the meantime, you live alone, very elegantly, in London. Your husband Robert died in in nineteen eighty nine.

Presenter33:01

Do you still enjoy your life?

Presenter33:04

Are you still

Presenter33:06

I am alone, but

Presenter33:10

I'm not lonely.

Presenter33:15

I don't like to say it because I have too much respect for great writers, but I scribble.

Presenter33:25

I do write.

Presenter33:26

Tell me about your last record.

Presenter33:28

It's k.

Presenter33:30

Haydn's creation.

Presenter33:32

It sees everything.

Presenter33:35

Everything is in it. You can't say more than the word creation.

Speaker 333:42

Don't feel instruments thought of their fake earth.

Speaker 434:27

Moon

Presenter34:43

Francisco Areissa and Jose Van Damme and the choir and orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karrian, performing part of Haydn's Creation. Now, Louisa, you f if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Presenter35:00

Isn't it

Presenter35:02

What about a book? You've got Shakespeare, and you've got the Bible?

Presenter35:06

What book would you like to take? Well, I first thought of the encyclopedia, as most people probably have, but I thought, why should I clutter my little mind uh with uh reader's digest statistics? No.

Presenter35:23

I decided on Isaiah Berlin's.

Presenter35:27

The proper study of mankind.

Presenter35:31

And what's your luxury?

Presenter35:34

My luxury

Presenter35:37

You can't give me that.

Presenter35:39

What is it?

Presenter35:42

to be missed by the many people I love.

Presenter35:46

Louisa Reiner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Luise Rainer35:58

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.