The actress Luise Rainer, who featured in Kurt Gerron’s final German production in 1933, became a celebrated Hollywood star in the mid-1930s – albeit for a relatively short period. She stands as the first person to have ever been awarded an Oscar two years in succession – in 1937 and 1938 – and she is still today the only German actress to have one the Best Actress category at the Academy Awards. She was as surprised as anyone by her successes and was fond of neither the films nor the roles which brought her these accolades. 

Her first Oscar-winning role, in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), is only 20 minutes in length. Rainer plays the French singer Anna Held, who is signed up by the promoter Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. to star in his theatrical productions. She goes on to marry her employer but the relationship eventually turns sour and Ziegfeld Jr. marries another of his stage performers. The scene that has received particular critical praise depicts Held learning of her ex-husband’s marriage to his new lover just before he calls her on the telephone. Through a flood of tears she smiles and wishes him well with his new wife. But aside from this moving scene, the role requires the German actress to simply look pretty on stage, as part of the various Broadway stage performances that dominate the film.

The following year she received an Oscar for her almost completely silent role as the Chinese character O-Lung in The Good Earth, a film based on the novel by Pearl S. Buck. Unimpressed by these awards and frustrated by the general circus of Hollywood, Luise Rainer moved to England and New York, returning to a career in stage acting in the process.