How many centenarians of entertainment do you know?

Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, California on July 4, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl. She was the star of her senior class play at Santa Monica High School in 1927. Attending the University of California, at Berkeley, she continued to perform on the stage. Stuart married and move to Carmel, where she performed in a production of "The Seagull" which was transferred to the Pasadena Playhouse in 1932. It was there that talent scouts for both Paramount and Universal saw her. In a famous dispute, the heads of the two studios flipped a coin and Universal won. She played lead roles for director James Whale, including (The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)). The hard work at the studio estranged her from her first husband (Stuart helped create the Screen Actors Guild). She played the leading lady in Roman Scandals (1933), on the set of which she met her husband Arthur Sheekman. She was dissatisfied with the roles in which she was cast at Universal and played roles in films for other studios. Ultimately, a few years after having her daughter Sylvia (named after the role she was playing when she met Sheekman), she left the cinema and sought roles on the stage in New York. In the 1940s, she opened an art furniture shop where she created decoupage lamps, tables and trays, many of which sold to stars like Judy Garland and others. Later, Stuart took up oil painting and was very prolific, showing and selling her work in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Her landscapes of The Watts Towers are on permanent collection at The Los Angeles County Museum. She also took up and mastered the art of bonsai and some of her trees are on permanent collection in the Huntington Library Japanese Garden. When her husband fell ill in the 1970s (he died in 1978), she returned to acting doing a range of television series. In 1982, she returned to the screen appearing in a brief dance scene with Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982).

About this time a friend, she knew half a century earlier in Carmel, who was a master printer, re-entered her life and from him, Stuart learned the craft of fine printing. She established a printing press in her home studio called Imprenta Glorias. where she created a body of fine artist's books. Her greatest book, "Flight of Butterfly Kites" is in permanent collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gloria Stuart won a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar-nomination for her performance as the Old Rose in Titanic (1997). In July 2010, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored Gloria Stuart with a Centennial Celebration. She was the first such honoree to be living for a centennial. At 100 years of age, she had completed her greatest artist's book with her great-granddaughter working as her apprentice and also her final appearance on film in her grandson's documentary about her, entitled Secret Life of Old Rose: The Art of Gloria Stuart (2012) when she died at home at the age of 100 on September 26, 2010.

George Burns (1896-1996) was an American comedian, actor, singer, and published author. He formed a comedy duo with his wife, Gracie Allen (1895-1964), and typically played the straight man to her zany roles. After her death, Burns started appearing as a solo performer. He once won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1975, and continued performing until his 90s. He lived to be 100 years old, and was viewed as an "elder statesman" in the field of comedy.

Burns was born under the name Nathan Birnbaum on January 20, 1896 and was nicknamed "Nattie" by his family. His father was Eliezer "Louis" Birnbaum (1855-1903), a coat presser who also served a substitute cantor at a local synagogue in New York City. His mother was Hadassah "Dorah" Bluth (1857-1927), a homemaker. Both parents were Jewish immigrants, originally from the small town of Kolbuszowa in Austrian Galicia (which is now part of Poland). Kolbuszowa had a large Jewish population until World War II, when the German occupation forces in Poland relocated the local Jews to a ghetto in Rzeszów.

The Birnbaums were a large family, and Burns had 11 siblings. He was the ninth oldest of the Birnbaum children. In 1903, Louis Birnbaum caught influenza and died during an ongoing influenza epidemic. Orphaned when he was 7 years old, Burns had to work to financially support his family. He variously shined shoes, ran errands, sold newspapers, and worked as a syrup maker in a local candy store.

Burns liked to sing while working, and practiced singing harmony with three co-workers of similar age. They were discovered by mail carrier Lou Farley, who gave them the idea to perform singing in exchange for payment. The four children soon started performing as "the Pee-Wee Quartet", singing in brothels, ferry boats, saloons, and street corners. They put their hats down for donations from their audience, though their audience was not always generous. In Burns' own words: "Sometimes the customers threw something in the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats."

Burns started smoking cigars c. 1910, when he was 14 years old. It became a lifelong habit for him. Burns' performing career was briefly interrupted in 1917 when he was drafted for service in World War I. He eventually failed his physical exams due to his poor eyesight.

By the early 1920s, he adopted the stage name "George Burns", though he told several different versions of why he chose the name. In one version, he supposedly named himself after the then-famous baseball player George Henry Burns (1897-1978), or the also then-famous baseball player George Joseph Burns (1889-1966). In another version, he named himself after his brother, Izzy "George" Birnbaum, and took the last name "Burns" in honor of the Burns Brothers Coal Company.

Burns performed dance routines with various female partners, until he eventually married his most recent partner, Gracie Allen, in 1926. Burns made his film debut in the short comedy film "Lambchops" (1929), which was distributed by Vitaphone. The film simply recorded one of Burns and Allen's comedy routines from vaudeville.

Burns made his feature film debut in a supporting role of the musical comedy "The Big Broadcast" (1932). He appeared regularly in films throughout the 1930s, with his last film role for several years being an appearance in the musical film "Honolulu" (1939). He was reportedly considered for the lead role in the film "Road to Singapore" (1940), but the studio replaced him with Bob Hope (1903-2003) instead.

Burns and Allen started appearing as the comedy relief for a radio show featuring bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902-1977). By February 1932, they received their own sketch comedy radio show. The couple portrayed younger singles until the show was retooled in 1941 and started featuring them as a married couple. By the autumn of 1941, the show had evolved into a situation comedy about their married life. Burns and Allen's supporting cast included notable voice actors Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet, and Hal March.

The radio show finally ended in 1949 and was reworked into the popular TV show "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" (1950-1958). Allen would typically play the "illogically logical" housewife, while Burns played the straight man and often broke the fourth wall to speak to the audience. The couple formed the production company named the McCadden Corporation to help produce the show.

Allen developed heart problems during the 1950s, and by the late 1950s she was unable to put up the energy needed for the show. She fully retired in 1958. The show was briefly reworked again into "The George Burns Show" (1958-1959), but Burns' comedic style at the time was not as popular as that of his wife. The new show was canceled due to low ratings.

Following Allen's death in 1964, Burns attempted a TV comeback by creating the sitcom "Wendy and Me" (1964-1965) about the life of a younger married couple. The lead roles were reserved for Ron Harper and Connie Stevens, while Burns had a supporting role as their landlord. He also performed as the show's narrator.

As a TV producer, Burns produced the military comedies "No Time for Sergeants" (1964-1965) and "Mona McCluskey" (1965-1966). As an actor, he mostly appeared in theaters and night clubs. Burns then had a major career comeback with the comedy film "The Sunshine Boys" (1975), his first film appearance since World War II. He played faded vaudevillian Al Lewis who had a difficult relationship with his former partner, Willy Clark (played by Walter Matthau). The role was met with critical success, and Burns won the Academy Award in that year for Best Supporting Actor. At age 80, Burns was the oldest Oscar winner at the time. His record was broken twice, first by Jessica Tandy in 1990 and then by Christopher Plummer in 2012.

Burns had his greatest film success playing God in the comedy film "Oh, God!" (1977). The film made $51 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was one of the greatest hit films of 1977. He returned to the role in the film's two sequels, "Oh, God! Book II" (1980) and "Oh, God! You Devil" (1984), and had a double role as both God and the devil in the last film of the trilogy.

Burns had several other film roles until the 1990s. His most notable films in this period were the musical-comedy film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1978), the comedy film "Just You and Me, Kid" (1979), the caper film "Going in Style" (1979), and the fantasy-comedy film "18 Again!" (1988). The last of these four films featured him as a grandfather who exchanges souls with his grandson.

Burns' last film role was a bit part in the mystery film "Radioland Murders" (1994), which was a box office flop. In July 1994, Burns slipped and fell in his bathtub and underwent surgery to remove fluid in his skull. He survived, but his health never fully recovered and, as a result, he was forced to retire from both acting and stand-up comedy.

On January 20, 1996 Burns celebrated his 100th birthday, but by then he was in very fragile health and had to cancel a previously arranged comeback performance at the London Pallidium. On March 9, 1996 he suffered from cardiac arrest and died. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California next to his wife, Gracie Allen. The couple were interred in the cemetery's Freedom Mausoleum at its Sanctuary of Heritage.

Margaret Booth was born on 14 January 1898 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an editor and producer, known for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Murder by Death (1976) and Annie (1982). She died on 28 October 2002 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Ethel Owen was born on 30 March 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Kraft Theatre (1947) and Inner Sanctum (1954). She was married to John Hale Almy and Dr. Raymond Gilbert Owens. She died on 16 February 1997 in Savannah, Georgia, USA.

Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidor Baline on May 11, 1888 in Mogilev, Belarus, Russian Empire. Towering composer, songwriter, ("God Bless America", "Always", "Blue Skies", "White Christmas") author and publisher, he came to the United States at age 5 and was educated in New York's public schools. His earliest musical education was from his father, a cantor. He earned Honorary degrees from Bucknell University and Temple University. Beginning his career as a song-plugger for publisher Harry von Tilzer, Berlin worked as a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1909, he was hired as a staff lyricist by the Ted Snyder Company, and became a partner to that firm four years later.

In 1910, he began doing vaudeville appearances in the United States and abroad, and also appeared with Snyder in the Broadway musical "Up and Down Broadway", that ran for 72 performances. He joined ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, and served on its first board of directors between 1914-1918. Berlin enlisted the United States Army infantry in World War I, and was a sergeant at Camp Upton, New York. After the war, he established his own public-relations firm, and in 1921, he built the 1025-seat Music Box Theatre (at 239 W. 45th Street, New York) with Sam H. Harris. After Harris' death in 1941, Berlin assumed full ownership and the theatre remains a Broadway institution to this day.

Among his many awards was the Medal for Merit for his 1942 all-soldier show "This Is the Army", which toured the United States, Europe and South Pacific battle zones; all proceeds were assigned to Army Emergency Relief and other service agencies. Berlin was also a member of the French Legion of Honor and held the Congressional Medal of Honor for "God Bless America", the proceeds from which went to the God Bless America Fund. His songs were sung by Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Alice Faye and many others. Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 of natural causes on September 22, 1989 in New York City.

Irving Lippman was born on 8 November 1906 in Edendale, California, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Jungle Jim (1955), Angel Unchained (1970) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). He died on 15 November 2006 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.

Irving Rapper was one of the last surviving directors from the "Golden Age of Hollywood," passing away on Dec. 20, 1999, at the age of 101, four weeks shy of his 102nd birthday. Rapper is best remembered for the films he made with Bette Davis, including the classics Now, Voyager (1942) and The Corn Is Green (1945). He also directed the first film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie (1950), and the Rapper-helmed The Brave One (1956) won screenwriter Robert Rich an Oscar (Rich actually was blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, one of The Hollywood Ten, who did not receive his Oscar for almost 20 years). Rapper continued directing well into the 1970s.

Born in London on January 16, 1898, he emigrated to the United States and became an actor and stage director on Broadway while studying at New York University. In the mid-'30s, he journeyed westward to Hollywood, hired as an assistant director and dialog coach at Warner Bros., where he proved invaluable translating--and mediating--for non-native-English-speaking directors; by the early 1940s, he had metamorphosed into the hottest director on the Warner Bros. lot.

Hired as a "dialog director" (a position created by the film studios in the late 1920s with the advent of sound) by Warners in 1935, he practiced that craft until 1941, when he was promoted to director. While the position of dialog director no longer exists, in the first decades of the talkies dialog directors worked with the actors on their line readings and interpretation of individual scenes. The position was particularly critical when the director was a foreigner who didn't understand English very well.

Rapper initially worked with Gernan émigré William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939). While Dieterle was focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, such as the lighting of the sets and the camera angles, Rapper concentrated on the actors' performances. He also served as a dialog director for Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz, for whom he translated (and who, according to Rapper, spoke English more poorly the longer he was in Hollywood) and French-born Anatole Litvak. In that position, Rapper forged strong bonds with certain actors, who came to depend on him.

Bette Davis and Rapper formed a bond that included the free solicitation of advice. He counseled Davis to ask to have William Keighley, who was originally assigned to direct her in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), replaced by Curtiz. Davis was to be in heavy makeup, and Rapper knew that Curtiz, a perfectionist, would be the right man to capture the visuals in the costume drama. Ironically, Rapper did not get to be the dialog director on the film, as he was assigned to a troubled picture helmed by Litvak. Without him on the set of "Elizabeth and Essex" to run interference, Davis and Curtiz--both strong-willed perfectionists---fought furiously.

Rapper resisted being assigned as a director of "B" films because he knew that once you were assigned to that unit you were stuck there and would never get a chance to graduate to "A" pictures. Rapper bided his time until he was offered a "programmer," Shining Victory (1941), by studio head Jack L. Warner. Shot without stars, the inspirational movie was a modest success and Warners assigned him to another "inspirational" picture, about a minister, One Foot in Heaven (1941). The minister was played by Oscar-winner Fredric March, then widely considered the best American actor since John Barrymore (who had by now turned into a parody of himself). March's talent was matched only by Paul Muni and the Great Profile's brother Lionel Barrymore. March was enthusiastic about the character and has long considered it one of his favorite roles. The film's success solidified Rapper's filmmaking career, which was further bolstered by his next picture The Gay Sisters (1942), starring the great Barbara Stanwyck, who lobbied for the role.

The next picture he directed was destined to become a classic. "Now, Voyager" (1942) was "the picture that made me," Rapper said in a 1981 interview. Politics played a role in his nabbing the choice assignment with only three directorial credits under his belt. Hal B. Wallis, a Warners producer with his own unit, intended to cast Irene Dunne in the picture, but Rapper leaked Wallis' plans to his close friend Bette Davis, who demanded the part from Jack L. Warner. The front office gave in to her demands, and she reciprocated Rapper's favor by asking for him as her director.

Rapper knew that casting Davis' co-stars was important if the picture was to work. He defied Wallis' choice of May Whitty as the mother of Davis' character, stumping for Gladys Cooper, whom Wallis claimed he had never heard of. Cooper received an Oscar nomination in the role. Paul Henreid got his first big break from Rapper, who tested him and then got approval to cast him (although the role made Henreid's career, he later humiliated Rapper at Davis' gala American Film Institute tribute in 1977, where he mocked the director and took credit for the famous scene where he lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis. According to Rapper, Henreid had always wanted to be a successful director, and this engendered a personal enmity in him towards the director who "discovered him").

In addition to Davis and Henreid, Rapper attributed the film's success to lighting cameraman Sol Polito and versatile character actor Claude Rains, who played the psychoanalyst and thus the third side of the love triangle anchored by Davis and Henreid. Rapper felt that after the picture ends, Davis' character eventually will marry her psychoanalyst.

Rapper reteamed with Davis for the highly successful "The Corn Is Green" (1945), a story set in Wales but shot entirely--even the outdoor scenes--on Warners' sound stages. Rapper said that for her role as the Welsh schoolteacher, Davis tried very hard to not use the mannerisms that had made her famous. Rapper believes that John Dall, who played the schoolboy and whom he discovered, did not have a major career and became typecast as a villain because he was androgynous, and the public mood and cinema censorship of the time would not allow such an actor to be a star.

Rapper reportedly broke with Warners over Rhapsody in Blue (1945), a biography of George Gershwin. He felt that the script, which was approved by the Gershwin family which initially controlled the project, was wrong in that it made Gerswhin a character infatuated with two fictional women, while the real Gershwin was likely only really enthused about his music. Jack Warner, whose studio had never employed Gershwin and thus was an odd choice for the Gershwin family to entrust with his life story, fought the director over his choice of John Garfield to play the composer. Rapper believed that the casting of the film was all-important and its success ultimately was compromised by the casting of the bland Robert Alda at Warner's insistence. Jack Warner would not cast Garfield, as he was seeking leverage in the actor's upcoming contract negotiations. He also vetoed Rapper's second choice of Cary Grant on the grounds that no one would accept Grant as a composer (Warner subsequently took Rapper's insight to heart and cast Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946)). Although he looked like Gershwin, Alda "had a blah personality," Rapper told an interviewer in 1981. The film was showcased at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, but ultimately it was a failure. Some movie historians believe that Rapper's disenchantment over the failure of the film caused him to eventually break with Warner Bros.

He made Deception (1946) with Davis, which reunited her with "Now, Voyager" co-stars Rains and Henreid. Rapper claims that the movie was compromised when Davis--who was convinced that Rains' performance was stealing the picture from her--went behind Rapper's back and got Jack Warner to change the script so that she could shoot Rains' character in the finale. Rapper believed that the new ending weakened the picture. He also felt that his next picture The Voice of the Turtle (1947), an adaptation of the huge Broadway hit, was compromised by the casting of Ronald Reagan as the leading man. Despite Reagan's trying to beef his part up by inventing bits of business, Rapper believes that Eve Arden stole the film from him and his co-star, Eleanor Parker.

Rapper claimed in 1981 that he left Warners and became a freelancer due to the bad advice of his agent, who told him " . . . the movie business was booming and I could have my pick of assignments." Unfortunately, neither Rapper nor his agent forecast the downturn in the industry caused by the advent of television and the US Justice Department's order that the film studios divest themselves of their theater chains. The industry went into an economic tailspin, and Rapper's career suffered.

His first post-Warners gig was at Columbia Pictures, directing Anna Lucasta (1949). Originally a story of an African-American girl looking for acceptance from society, studio boss Harry Cohn had the girl and her family's ethnic identity changed to Polish, with narrative results that were, in Rapper's words, "pretty bizarre." Rapper wanted future Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the girl, but Columbia cast Paulette Goddard in order to fulfill a one-picture commitment she had to the studio. Goddard got the role because she had threatened to sue Columbia if the studio didn't fulfill her contract. Rapper said that Goddard was "hopeless in drama. She couldn't match any bits of business and her reading of lines was wooden." Cast in the role of a teenager, Goddard "claimed she was 34 but the records showed it was more like 44." Thus are debacles made.

Rapper returned to Warner Bros. to helm The Glass Menagerie (1950), the first movie adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, because producer Charles Feldman requested him. Just off her Oscar win for Johnny Belinda (1948), the 36-year-old Jane Wyman was cast as the 20-something Laura to boost box-office returns. Tallulah Bankhead was hired to play Amanda Wingfield, but her drunkenness on the set on the second day of shooting led Jack Warner to fire her. Refusing to cast Miriam Hopkins "because of past differences," Warner "positively screamed when I mentioned Bette Davis." Ruth Chatterton was considered, and Ethel Barrymore, who wanted the part, was rejected as being too old. Finally, said Rapper, "that left Gertrude Lawrence, who had little camera experience and was so very jittery she'd cry every time a take was spoiled."

Commenting on the film three decades later, Rapper said, "I still like Kirk Douglas as the gentleman caller and Arthur Kennedy as Tom." The movie, considered one of the least successful adaptations of Williams' work, is barely remembered today and suffers from a bowdlerization of the original play. Williams hated the film as, against his wishes, the script implies a totally different, more upbeat ending than his play.

Of his later films, Rapper felt that they suffered, as he "missed the studio set-up." He claimed "The Brave One" (1956) as his best movie. Marjorie Morningstar (1958) was his last success at the box office, and his career tailed off in the 1960s, although he continued to direct until the end of the 1970s.

He attributed the failure of The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970) to "casting a beautiful boy [John Hansen] rather than a girl" to play Jorgensen, who rocketed to fame in the 1950s after a sex change. "That, after all, was Christine's story. She always believed she was a woman trapped inside a man's body." Born Again (1978), based on a memoir of a convicted Watergate co-conspirator who was on President Richard Nixon's staff, was a failure, as Rapper "was prevented from dramatizing the crimes of Charles Colson, only the redemption--and that made for boredom."

"Born Again" turned out to be Rapper's last film, as he reneged on his commitment to direct Sextette (1977), an exploitation film based on the joke of the elderly Mae West taking a (far younger) husband, her sixth. Rapper backed out, as he didn't have the heart for it: "Mae West was too frail-looking. She'd put her hands on her hips but there were no hips; she had faded away. However, I helped her with her line readings. So, you see, I was back to where I started--as a dialog director!"

Irving Rapper's goal late in life was to live in three separate centuries. He died on Dec. 20, 1999, aged 101, a little less than two weeks shy of fulfilling that wish.

Born in Brooklyn, New York on June 21, 1911, Irving Ashley Fein was found to be an excellent student and skipped several elementary school grades. His interest in acting and writing was developed during the summer months between college terms at various summer camps. After working in the publicity department of Warner Brothers, Irving jumped ship for MGM. His major fame was from working for decades as publicity agent for both Jack Benny and George Burns. He is still with us approaching the age of 100 just as his last client George Burns did. (2008)

Composer, songwriter ("Swanee", "Tea for Two", "Crazy Rhythm", "Just a Gigolo"), author and publisher, educated at Chautauqua Mountain Institute and City College of New York. He was a stenographer aboard the Henry Ford Peace Ship during World War I. He joined ASCAP in 1920 and was a director between 1920 and 1946, and again in 1949, and he was the co-founder and a past-president of AGAC. He collaborated musically with George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Ray Henderson, Cliff Friend, Louis Hirsch, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joseph Meyer, Oscar Levant and Gerald Marks. His Broadway stage scores include "Greenwich Village Follies " (four editions), "Betty Lee", "Sweetheart Time", "No, No, Nanette", "Yes, Yes, Yvette", "Here's Howe", "Americana", "Ripples", "Nina Rosa", "The Wonder Bar", "Melody" and "White Horse Inn". His popular song compositions also include "Imagination", "There Ought to Be a Law Against That", "Lady Play Your Mandolin", "You Are the Song", "What, No Mickey Mouse", "Give Me a Roll on the Drum", "If I Forget You", "Hold My Hand", "My Dog Loves Your Dog", "Oh, You Nasty Man", "Oh, Susannah, Dust Off that Old Pianna", "That's What I Want for Christmas", "Animal Crackers in My Soup", "Blue Eyes", "I Canno Live Without Your Love", "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?", "Love Is Such a Cheat", "Umbriago", "I Was So Young (You Were So Beautiful), "Sixty Seconds Every Minute", "Chansonette", "What Do You Do Sunday, Mary?", "Nashville Nightingale", "I Want to Be Happy", "Too Many Rings Around Rosie", "You Can Dance With Any Girl At All", "Sometimes I'm Happy", "Gigolette", "I'm a Little Fonder of You", and "Your US Mail Gets Through" (official song, National Association of Postmasters of the U.S.).

Doris Eaton was born in Norfolk, Virginia, into a show business family. The young Doris began appearing on stage with her brothers Charles and Joseph and her sisters Mary and Pearl when she was five years old. She made her Broadway debut aside her brother Charles in "Mother Carey's Chickens" in 1917. The following year, the 14-year-old Doris became a Ziegfeld Girl, performing in the "Ziegfeld Follies" of 1918 and 1920 and the "Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic" in 1919. After having served her dance apprenticeship in legendary theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s chorus for three years, she decamped for the movies. She made her screen debut in "At the Stage Door" (1921) in support of Billie Dove.

She moved to England to appear as the lead in three films, Tell Your Children (1922), The Call of the East (1922), and The Call of the East (1922). Back in America, she made The Broadway Peacock (1922) with Pearl White and High Kickers (1923) with Jack Cooper and the Gorham Follies Girls.

Doris returned to Broadway in 1924, appearing in the musical "No Other Girl" and the plays "The Sap" and "Excess Baggage." In 1925, she co-starred with Al Jolson in the musical comedy "Big Boy." She then appeared in the comedy "Excess Baggage" in 1927, and the musical comedy "Cross My Heart" the next year. Moving to Hollywood in 1929, she began a career as a featured dancer at the Music Box Review Theater on Sunset Boulevard. It was there that she introduced the song "Singin' in the Rain." Her last appearance on Broadway in a legitimate production was in the comedy "Page Pygmalion" in 1932.

Her career as a dancer began to peter out during the Great Depression, and she became an Arthur Murray dance instructor in 1936. Relocating to the state of Michigan, she eventually became the operator of 18 Arthur Murray dance schools. Eventually, Doris retired to Oklahoma with her husband Paul Tavis, where they operated a quarter horse ranch. When they built their house in Norman, Oklahoma, Doris demanded that the house have a foyer large enough for dancing. Doris still dances in the foyer at night.

"I have my little Victrola there and I play the records and I dance the foxtrot and the waltz and the rumba, though swaying by myself."

Doris has become a regular performer at Broadway's annual AIDS benefit. People express surprise that she was a Ziegfeld Girl.

"It seems that when people find out about it, they're astonished; and possibly because I'm still walking around."

Since her husband passed away in the year 2000, Doris lets people use the ranch to board their horses. Doris jokes, "I call it the Travis Ranch Nursing Home for Horses."

She had dropped out of school to pursue her dance career, but in the 1980s, Travis went back to college and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1992. She was named a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society while at the university.

At 101 years old, Doris was quoted as saying that dance was the primary reason for her longevity. In fact, her last stage appearance was one month short of her death at age 106.

Lucile Zinman was born on 22 July 1903 in Yonkers, New York, USA. She was married to M. Boyd Zinman. She died on 22 December 2004.

Myrtle Woods was born on 14 March 1900 in Albury, New South Wales, Australia. She was an actress, known for A Woman's Tale (1991), The Great MacArthy (1975) and Say a Little Prayer (1993). She was married to Woods. She died on 12 May 2001 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Sylvia Davis was born on 10 April 1910 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Stardust Memories (1980), Alice's Restaurant (1969) and The Edge of Night (1956). She died on 3 November 2010 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.

American politician and songwriter who appeared in a number of films. Davis was born in the now-nonexistent town of Beech Springs, Louisiana, the son of sharecroppers. He and his ten siblings lived in dire poverty, but Davis paid his way through Louisiana College and Louisiana State University as a street musician. After graduate school, he taught at Dodd College for Women, supporting himself with a singing job on a local radio station. He got a chance to record one of his songs when a record talent scout heard him on a broadcast, and in 1934 his song "Nobody's Darling But Mine" was a hit. A 1931 song, "You Are My Sunshine," became a 1939 hit, a standard eventually recorded by a score of singing stars from Bing Crosby to Aretha Franklin. No longer poor, but unable to live off his songs, Davis entered politics and was elected police chief of Shreveport. He continued to record songs and occasionally acted in movies, especially B-Westerns, until in 1943 he decided to run for governor of Louisiana. Although Davis's opponent tried to use his singing background against him, it actually was a great factor in Davis's election to the post. Even after he was elected governor, he continued to record songs and played himself in a movie of his life, Louisiana (1947). During the 1950s, he made records and concert appearances, then ran again for governor again in the 1960s. He was elected again and reluctantly presided over Louisiana's difficult transition into greater racial equality. After this second term, Davis spent the rest of his career singing, recording over fifty albums. He died at 101, enormously popular in his home state and likely to be remembered less as a politician or actor than as the composer of "You Are My Sunshine," one of the most familiar American songs of all time.

Mary Ward was born on 6 March 1915 in Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia. She was an actress, known for Blue Heelers (1994), If This Be Sin (1949) and Backstage (1988). She died on 19 July 2021 in Murrumbeena, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Miguel Morayta was born on 15 August 1907 in Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He was a director and writer, known for El mártir del Calvario (1952), Vagabunda (1950) and La mujer marcada (1957). He died on 19 June 2013 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Manoel de Oliveira was born on 11 December 1908 in Oporto, Portugal. He was a director and writer, known for The Cannibals (1988), I'm Going Home (2001) and Voyage to the Beginning of the World (1997). He was married to Maria Isabel Brandão de Meneses de Almeida Carvalhais. He died on 2 April 2015 in Oporto, Portugal.

Leni Riefenstahl's show-biz experience began with an experiment: she wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention of film director Arnold Fanck, subsequently starring in some of his mountaineering pictures. With Fanck as her mentor, Riefenstahl began directing films.

Her penchant for artistic work earned her acclaim and awards for her films across Europe. It was her work on Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary commissioned by the Nazi government about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, that would come back to haunt her after the atrocities of World War II. Despite her protests to the contrary, Riefenstahl was considered an intricate part of the Third Reich's propaganda machine. Condemned by the international community, she did not make another movie for over 50 years.

Rosa Albach-Retty was born on 26 December 1874 in Hanau, Hesse, Germany. She was an actress, known for Geld auf der Straße (1930), Dreimal Hochzeit (1941) and Maria Ilona (1939). She was married to Karl Albach. She died on 26 August 1980 in Baden, Lower Austria, Austria.

Tonio Selwart was born on 9 June 1896 in Wartenberg, Bavaria, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Other Side of the Wind (2018), Wilson (1944) and The Hitler Gang (1944). He died on 2 November 2002 in New York, USA.

Erwin Geschonneck was born on 27 December 1906 in Bartenstein/East Prussia (now Poland). In the Twenties, he became a member of the Communistic Party of Germany. After rise of Nazism, he emigrated to Poland, later to Latvia and Czechoslovakia. In the Soviet Union he became a member of a German theatre company. In 1938 he was arrested in Prague and was deported to different concentration camps. Finally he was evacuated from the concentration camp of Neuengamme near Hamburg to Denmark. But the boat, the Cap Arcona, was accidentally bombed by the RAF. The ship sank in the bay of Lübeck, and Geschonneck was one of only a few survivors. In 1945 he played theatre in Hamburg and had his film debut in Helmut Käutner's post-war drama 'In Jenen Tagen'. It was the famous 'Bertholt Brecht' who offered him a contract for his Berlin Ensemble. Geschonneck moved to East Berlin and became a star of the newly founded DEFA, the only production company of the German Democratic Republic.

Guzzi Lantschner was born on 12 August 1910 in Innsbruck, Austria. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Osterskitour in Tirol (1940), Canción de la nieve (1954) and Wilde Wasser (1937). He died on 19 March 2011 in Krailling, Bavaria, Germany.

Renate Brausewetter was born on 1 October 1905 in Málaga, Málaga, Andalucía, Spain. She was an actress, known for Adventures of a Ten Mark Note (1926), Menschen untereinander (1926) and Schwere Jungs - leichte Mädchen (1927). She was married to Hubert Wagner. She died on 19 August 2006 in Linz am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

In the quest to discover "another Garbo" M.G.M. production chief Irving Thalberg and his actress wife, Norma Shearer saw a picture in a newspaper of a dancing instructor by the name of Eva Plentzner von Sharneck while on a belated honeymoon to Europe, specifically Vienna in late 1927 - early 1928. The 17 year old Miss Plentzner was signed to a contract and arrived in New York in July of 1928. She spoke only a couple of words of English, but was the beneficiary of extra publicity by the studio's press department who feared a repeat of their overlooking a potential star in the way they had done with Garbo. She was renamed Eva von Berne.

Unfortunately, the completely untrained Miss von Berne was not prepared for the requirements and pressures of movie stardom. Her greatest fault was being 20 pounds overweight, causing her debut movie opposite M.G.M.'s top male star, John Gilbert, to be delayed while considering whether to replace the 17 year old actress or not. The cast and crew liked Miss von Berne and vowed to help her during a forced recess in the filming, and have her underweight and skilled enough to resume her ingénue role. She completed "Masks of the Devil" but the damage had already been done, and while the movie was opening in theatres in the fall of 1928, by December Miss von Berne was back in Europe, ostensibly to "learn English" as stated in the studio releases.

Her reviews for "Masks of the Devil" were respectable, but, in the US no more than six months, she was sent back to Europe, where she was at least, an American movie star and was cast in a number of German films before her reputed death in 1930.

Hubert Voight, a publicist with M.G.M. erroneously released news of Miss Von Berne's death in 1930, a notice which was picked up in a number of American newspapers. In a 1980's article in the magazine "Sight and Sound" he repeated his belief that she had passed, when in fact, she was very much alive.

After 1930, Eva worked as an executive in window display for a Vienna department store. During World War II, Eva fled to Salzburg to be with her family. Eva married Helmut Krauss, a former major in the Austrian army. She had a successful career as an artist with numerous exhibitions in Austria.

In a telephone interview with German film journalist Toni Schieck in 2006, Miss von Berne said she believe it was fortunate that the world thought she was dead because she didn't have to deal with autograph hunters.

It is impossible to determine the quality of Miss von Berne's acting skills as "Masks of the Devil" is a lost film. Tragedy was no stranger to its cast though, as it included John Gilbert who was (one way or another) a casualty of sound and Alma Rubens, an actress reputed to have health issues emanating from a drug dependency.

Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a young actress, she was discovered by the legendary theater director Max Reinhardt and became part of his company in Vienna, Austria. "I was supposed to be very gifted, and he heard about me. He wanted me to be part of his theater," Rainer recounted in a 1997 interview. She joined Reinhardt's theatrical company in Vienna and spent years developing as an actress under his tutelage. As part of Reinhardt's company, Rainer became a popular stage actress in Berlin and Vienna in the early 1930s. Rainer was a natural talent for Reinhardt's type of staging, which required an impressionistic acting style.

Rainer, who made her screen debut as a teenager and appeared in three other German-language films in the early 1930s, terminated her European career when the Austrian Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in Germany. With his vicious anti-Semitism bringing about the Draconian Nuremberg Laws severely curtailing the rights of Germany's Jews, and efforts to expand that regime into the Sudetenland and Austria, Hitler and his Nazi government was proving a looming threat to European Jewry. Rainer had been spotted by a talent scout, who offered her a seven-year contract with the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The 25-year-old Rainer took the deal and emigrated to the United States.

She made her American debut in the movie Escapade (1935), replacing Myrna Loy, who was originally slated for the part. It was her luck to have William Powell as her co-star in her first Hollywood film, as he mentored her, teaching her how to act in front of the camera. Powell, whom Rainer remembers as "a dear man" and "a very fine person," lobbied MGM. boss Louis B. Mayer, reportedly telling him, "You've got to star this girl, or I'll look like an idiot."

During the making of "Escapade", Rainer met, and fell in love with, the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, then at the height of his fame. They were married in 1937. It was not a happy union. MGM cast Rainer in support of Powell in the title role of the The Great Ziegfeld (1936), its spectacular bio-epic featuring musical numbers that recreated his "Follies" shows on Broadway. As Anna Held, Ziegfeld's common-law wife, Rainer excelled in the musical numbers, but it is for her telephone scene that she is most remembered. "The Great Ziegfeld" was a big hit and went on to win the Academy Award as Best Picture of 1936. Rainer received her first of two successive Best Actress Oscars for playing Held. The award was highly controversial at the time as she was a relative unknown and it was only her first nomination, but also because her role was so short and relatively minor that it better qualified for a supporting nomination. (While 1936 was the first year that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored supporting players, her studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, listed her as a lead player, then got out its block vote for her.) Compounding the controversy was the fact that Rainer beat out such better known and more respected actresses as Carole Lombard (her sole Oscar nomination) in My Man Godfrey (1936), previous Best Actress winner Norma Shearer (her fifth nomination) in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and Irene Dunne (her second of five unsuccessful nominations) in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). Some of the bitchery was directed toward Louis B. Mayer, whom non-MGM Academy members resented for his ability to manipulate Academy votes. Other critics of her first Oscar win claimed it was the result of voters being unduly impressed with the great budget ($2 million) of "The Great Ziegfeld" rather than great acting. Most observers agree that Rainer won her Oscar as the result of her moving and poignant performance in just one single scene in the picture, the famous telephone scene in which the broken-hearted Held congratulates Ziegfeld over the telephone on his upcoming marriage to Billie Burke while trying to retain her composure and her dignity. During the scene, the camera is entirely focused on Rainer, and she delivers a tour-de-force performance. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous scenes in movie history. With another actress playing Held, the scene could have been mawkish, but Rainer brought the pathos of the scene out and onto film. She based her interpretation of the scene on Jean Cocteau's play "La Voix Humaine". "Cocteau's play is just a telephone conversation about a woman who has lost her beloved to another woman", Rainer remembered. "That is the comparison. As it fit into the Ziegfeld story, that's how I wrote it. It's a daily happening, not just in Cocteau." In an interview held 60 years after the film's release, Rainer was dismissive of the performance. "I was never proud of anything", she said. "I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that."

Rainer would allay any back-biting from Hollywood's bovines over her first Oscar with her performance as O-Lan in MGM producer Irving Thalberg's spectacular adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth", the former Boy Wonder's final picture before his untimely death. The role won Rainer her second Best Actress Award. The success of The Good Earth (1937) was rooted in its realism, and its realism was enhanced by Rainer's acting opposite the legendary Paul Muni as her husband. When Thalberg cast Muni in the role of Wang Lung, he had to abandon any thought of casting the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong as O-Lan as the Hays Office would not allow the hint of miscegenation, even between an actual Chinese woman and a Caucuasian actor in yellow-face drag. So, Thalberg gave Rainer the part, and she made O-Lan her own. She refused to wear a heavy makeup, and her elfin look helped her to assay a Chinese woman with results far superior to those of Myrna Loy in her Oriental vamp phase or Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944). In the late 1990s, Rainer praised her director, Sidney Franklin, as "wonderful", and explained that she used an acting technique similar to "The Method" being pioneered by her husband's Group Theatre comrades back in New York. "I worked from inside out", she said. "It's not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it." The win made Rainer the first two-time Oscar winner in an acting category and the first to win consecutive acting awards (Spencer Tracy, her distaff honoree for Captains Courageous (1937) would follow her as a consecutive acting Oscar winner the next year, and Walter Brennan, Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Come and Get It (1936) the year Rainer won her first, would tie them both in 1937 with his win for Kentucky (1938) and trump them with his third win for The Westerner (1940), a record subsequently tied by Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and surpassed by Katharine Hepburn.)

Rainer's career soon went into free-fall and collapsed, as she became the first notable victim of the "Oscar curse", the phenomenon that has seem many a performer's career take a nose-dive after winning an Academy Award. "For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me", Rainer said. A non-conformist, Rainer rejected Hollywood's values of Hollywood. In the late 1990s, she said, "I came from Europe where I was with a wonderful theater group, and I worked. The only thing on my mind was to do good work. I didn't know what an Academy Award was." MGM boss Mayer, the founding force behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had to force her to attend the Awards banquet to receive her Oscar. She rebelled against the studio due to the movies that MGM forced her into after "The Good Earth".

In one case, director Dorothy Arzner had been assigned by MGM producer Joseph M. Mankiewicz (whose wife, Rose Stradner had been Rainer's understudy in the Vienna State Theater) in 1937 to direct Rainer in "The Girl from Trieste", an unproduced Ferenc Molnár play about a prostitute trying to go reform herself who discovers the hypocrisies of the respectable class which she aspires to. After Thalberg's death in 1936, Mayer's lighter aesthetic began to rule the roost at MGM. Mayer genuinely believed in the goodness of women and motherhood and put women on a pedestal; he once told screenwriter Frances Marion that he never wanted to see anything produced by MGM that would embarrass his wife and two daughters.

Without the more sophisticated Thalberg at the studio to run interference, Molnar's play was rewritten so that it was no longer about a prostitute, but a slightly bitter Cinderella story with a happy ending. Retitled by Mankiewicz as The Bride Wore Red (1937), Rainer withdrew and was replaced by Joan Crawford. In a 1976 interview in "The New York Times", Arzner claimed that Rainer "had been suspended for marrying a Communist" (Clifford Odets). This is unlikely as MGM, like all Hollywood studios, had known or suspected communists on its payroll, most of whose affiliations were known by MGM vice president E.J. Mannix. (Mannix, one of whose functions was responsibility for security at the studio, once said it would have been impossible to fire them all, as "the communists" were the studio's best writers.) The studio never took action against alleged communists until an industry-wide agreement to do so was sealed at the Waldorf Conference of 1947, which was held in reaction to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launching a Hollywood witch hunt.

It was more likely that Rainer, fussy over her projects and wanting to use her Academy Award prominence to ensure herself better roles, withdrew on her own due to her lack of enthusiasm for the reformulated product. In the late 1990s, Rainer recalled the satisfaction of being a European stage actress. "One day we were on a big tour", she told an interviewer in the late 1990s. "We did a play by Pirandello, and Reinhardt was in the theater. I shall never forget, it was the greatest compliment I ever got, better than any Academy Award. He came to me, looked at me and said - we were never called by first names - 'Rainer, how did you do this?' It was so wonderful. 'How did you create this?' I was so startled and happy. That was my Academy Award." Rainer still is dismissive of the Academy Awards. "I can't watch the Oscars," she said. "Everybody thanking their mother, their father, their grandparents, their nurse - it's a crazy, horrible." She blames the studio and Mayer for the rapid decline in her career. "What they did with me upset me very much", she said in a 1997 interview. "I was dreaming naturally like anyone to do something very good, but after I got the two Academy Awards the studio thought, it doesn't matter what she gets. They threw all kinds of stuff on me, and I thought, no, I didn't want to be an actress."

Mayer pulled his famous emotional routines when Rainer, whom he wanted to turn into a glamorous star, would demand meatier roles. "He would cry phony tears", she recalled. Mayer had opposed her being cast as O-Lan in "The Good Earth", but Thalberg, who had a connection with MGM capo di tutti capi Nicholas Schenck, the president of MGM corporate parent Loew's, Inc., appealed to Schenck, who overrode Mayer's veto. (Mayer, who was involved in a power struggle with Thalberg before the latter's death, had opposed his filming Pearl Buck's novel. Mayer's reasoning was that American audiences wouldn't patronize movies about American farmers, so what made anyone think they'd flock to see a film about Chinese farmers, especially one with such a big budget, estimated at $2.8 million. (Upon release, the film barely broke even.) Thalberg died during the filming of "The Good Earth" (the only film of his released by MGM whose title credits bore his name, in the form of a posthumous tribute).

Rainer felt lost without her protector. She recalled that Mayer "didn't know what to do with me, and that made me so unhappy. I was on the stage with great artists, and everything was so wonderful. I was in a repertory theater, and every night I played something else." Rainer asked to play Nora in a film of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" or portray Madame Curie, but instead, Mayer - now in complete control of the studio - had her cast in The Toy Wife (1938), a movie she actually wound up liking, as she was charmed by her co-star, the urbane, intellectually and politically enlightened Melvyn Douglas. She recalls Douglas, ultimately a double-Oscar winner like herself, as her favorite leading man. "He was intelligent, and he was interested also in other things than acting."

Her problems with the culture of Hollywood, or the lack thereof, were worsening. The lack of intellectual conversation or concern with ideas by the denizens of the movie colony she was forced to work with was depressing. Hollywood was an unsophisticated place where materialism, such as the stars' preoccupation with clothes, was paramount. As she tells it, "Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a luncheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, 'Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do', and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table."

MGM teamed her with fellow Oscar-winner Tracy in Big City (1937), a movie about conflict between rival taxi drivers. The memory of the movie disgusted her. "Supposedly it wasn't a bad film, but I thought it was a bad film!" She was also cast in The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937), reteaming her with "Ziegfeld" co-star Powell, a movie she didn't like, as she couldn't understand its story. A detective tale, the script thoroughly confused Rainer, who was expected to soldier on like a good employee. Instead, she resisted.

After appearing in The Great Waltz (1938) and Dramatic School (1938), her career was virtually over by 1938. She never made another film for MGM. "I just had to get away", she said about Hollywood. "I couldn't bear this total concentration and interviews on oneself, oneself, oneself. I wanted to learn, and to live, to go all over the world, to learn by seeing things and experiencing things, and Hollywood seemed very narrow." When World War II broke out in Europe, Rainer was joined by her family, as her German-born father was also an American citizen, allowing them all to escape Hitler and the Holocaust. Even before the outbreak of war, Rainer had been very worried about the state of affairs of the world, and she could not abide the escapist trifles that MGM wanted to cast her in. When she protested, Mayer told Rainer that if she defied him, he would blackball her in Hollywood.

Disturbed by Hollywood's apathy over fascism in Europe and Asia and by labor unrest and poverty in the U.S., she decided to walk out on her contract. She and Odets returned to New York. They were divorced in 1940. "Hollywood was a very strange place", she remembered. "To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging." Her frustration with Hollywood was so complete, she abandoned movie acting in the early 1940s, after making the World War II drama Hostages (1943) for Paramount.

She made her Broadway debut in the play "A Kiss for Cinderella", which was staged by Lee Strasberg, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on March 10, 1942 and closed April 18th after 48 performances. Rainer then worked for the war effort during World War II, appearing at war bond rallies. She went on a tour of North Africa and Italy for the Army Special Service, socializing with soldiers to build their morale, and supplying them with books. The experience changed her life, allowing her to get over the shyness she'd had all her life. It also broadened her experience, forcing her to deal with the obvious fact that there were more important things than movie acting, which had proven unfulfilling to her.

Fortunately, Rainer found happiness in a long-lived marriage with the publisher Robert Knittel, a wealthy man whom she married in 1945. The couple had a daughter and made their home mostly in Switzerland and England as Rainer essentially left acting behind, although she did do some television in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Her retirement from the movies lasted for 53 years, until her brief comeback in The Gambler (1997), a movie based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's eponymous story. In the film, Rainer played the role of the matriarch of an aristocratic Russian family in the 1860s who is in hock due to the family members' obsession with gambling.

Toward the end of her life, Rainer lived in a luxurious flat in Eaton Square in London's Belgravia district, in a building where Vivien Leigh once lived. Blessed with a good memory, she claimed she could not remember the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony, when she won her first Oscar. She says the glamour of the event was out of sync with her life at the time, which was one of great sadness. "I married Clifford Odets. The marriage was for both of us a failure. He wanted me to be his little wife and a great actress at the same time. Somehow I could not live up to all of that."

She had intriguing offers during her long retirement. Federico Fellini had wanted Rainer for a role in La Dolce Vita (1960), but though she admired the director, she didn't like the script and turned it down. Rainer occasionally plied her craft as an actress on the stage. She made one more stab at Broadway, appearing in a 1950 production of Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea", which was staged by Sam Wanamaker and Terese Hayden and co-starred Steven Hill, one of the founding members of Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio. The play was a flop, running just 16 performances. "I was living in America and was on the stage there - sporadically. I always lived more than I worked. Which doesn't mean that I do not love my profession, and every moment I was in it gave me great satisfaction and happiness."

Rainer had no regrets over not becoming the star she might have been. She outlived all of the legendary stars of her era, which likely is the best revenge for the loss of her career after bidding adieu to a company town she could not abide.