The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 83

14 TftlC THa Dac anf( TKa Cunlnfi Tim CriHav lannarv A- 19ftt 16 TGIF The Post and The Evening Times, Friday January 3 1986 Luise Rainer searches for ulf illment By Hanns Neuerbourg The Associated Press VICO MORCOTE, Switzerland -One of the two Oscars on the white bookshelf looked distinctly new. "They sent it to me last year," Luise Rainer said with a puckish smile. "It replaces one that was leaning over metal fatigue." The two Academy Awards, for lead roles in "The Good Earth" and "The Great Ziegfeld," made her an acting sensation before World War II. But after only ZVt years, she left the busi- hairdo and the slim figure of a teenager, she retraced her career during -a recent interview in the study of her villa overlooking Lake Lugano. It started with a flop when she secretly went to an audition at the age of 16 while visiting relatives in Berlin, she recalled.

She had prepared herself by learning the lines of the nymphomaniac Lulu, the principal character in two plays by Frank Wedekind, the German expressionist writer and early advocate of sexual liberation. Under the pretext of visiting a museum, she sneaked into the Kammer-spiele Theater, nervously waiting for her turn to walk on the enormous stage. "All I had learned was Lulu's lines and that without knowing the facts of life. I was so terrified that I did not ness. Like the flight of Greta Garbo, Miss Rainer's sudden departure became one of Hollywood's classic mysteries.

It's been a half-century since her meteoric rise to fame, and the German-American actress looks back on her stint in the movies as merely one episode in a rich artistic life which she feels still lacks fulfillment. "Getting those awards does not mean anything to me," she said. "I feel I have not given all that's inside me." It was a typical comment from the 72-year-old actress, painter and occasional poet whose urge for perfection seems a dominant feature of a spectacular career. Dressed in a white cardigan with matching slacks, with a page-boy Best Seafood Buffet InTbwn we're going to kill she said. "He was a monster." Several factors prompted her decision the lack of privacy, the impossibility to "develop." On top of that came a tempestuous marriage to playwright Clifford Odets, whom she divorced in 1940.

"He suffered under my so-called fame," she said. "I could not bear having a world success and having this kind of problem." Her return to the stage was interrupted during the war when she played before GI audiences at the African and Italian fronts. In 1945, Miss Rainer married publisher Robert Knittel and had a daughter. "After this first horrible experience, I wanted harmony," she said. "So my life had to go more toward this little family." Her career continues.

She memorized all 900 lines of "Enoch Arden," Tennyson's epic poem, and played all three parts in a reading in 1981-83. She's also appeared on television. However, over the years, those appearances became less frequent as she found satisfaction in painting, culminating in a successful one-woman show in London. Four years ago, Miss Rainer and her husband moved from England to Switzerland, where she spent much of her youth. But living in picturesque surroundings close to the Italian border offers little stimulation.

"It's a paradise but it's the dullest place on Earth," she said. So they spend much time traveling. They were thrilled by a recent trip to China, where "The Good Earth" was a pre-war success. Stills from that film and others regularly come in the mail with letters asking for her autograph. Still, she feels unfulfilled.

"I still have this powerful machine in me that made me work the way I did. I did not live up to what was given me. I live in a beautiful house and it's like being a canary in a cage but I would like to be an eagle on the mountain." Januarys Polo Primer. trxi Luise Rainer remember one word," she said. Her debut came a short time later with another Wedekind play at Louise Dumont's Schauspielhaus in her native Duesseldorf.

Standing in for a sick actress, she played the lead in "Spring Awakening," focusing on the newly felt sex drive of adolescents. Critics responded with superlatives. Without ever having attended drama school, she won top billing virtually overnight. Swiftly catching the attention of Max Reinhardt, the celebrated Austrian-American director, she thrilled European audiences with a wide range of roles, from classic tragedy to comedy. A talent scout brought her to Hollywood, where she soared to instant stardom in her first film, "Escapade." Seven others followed, including "The Great Ziegfeld," an opulent musical, and "The Good Earth," based on Pearl S.

Buck's novel on peasant life in China. She was paid $250 a week. Miss Rainer was heralded as the new Garbo and became the first actress to win two Oscars back-to-back. Midway through her seven-year contract she quit in 1938, earning her the sobriquet "the star who walked out on Hollywood" and a threat from MGM's Louis B. Mayer.

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