Rainer grew up with "an immense need to express," she says with the slightly awkward English that remains from her childhood. She recalls that at 10 she reproduced a Rembrandt drawing only to be chastised by her father, an import-export executive, who told her, "It is a lie to copy someone else's work." (Thus traumatized, she did not take up art seriously again for five decades.) Growing up, she rebelled against her family's unsettled life, and after eight schools by the age of 16, she dropped out for the stage in her hometown, then Vienna. In 1935 she went to Hollywood for William Powell's Escapade, a part she had landed—along with the Metro contract.
"They completely abused me," she recalls. "I had no say at all." The other disappointment in her life was "a disastrous, Strindberg marriage" in 1937 to playwright Clifford Odets. He was "a beautiful, lovable man," however, she says, compared to MGM's Mayer, who told her other actresses sat on his knee when doing business. "I wouldn't," she recounts stiffly. She escaped to Manhattan and the stage in 1939 and made only one more movie, an admitted embarrassment, The Hostages. In 1945 she married Oxford-educated publisher Robert Knittel. They became the parents of a daughter, Francesca, and have lived in London since 1956.
Now a grandmother, Rainer says she'd consider a return to the screen "if the role were right." (Fellini, she says, "sank to his knees" on Rome's Spanish Steps to beg her to take a part in La Dolce Vita, which she rejected as ill-conceived.) In the meantime she stays busy with her painting, traveling, furnishing their vacation house overlooking Switzerland's Lake Lugano, and entertaining an occasional wistful reminiscence. "I wish I hadn't been so young," she says. "Hollywood is a terribly difficult place for a vulnerable person."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
