1936 – Luise Rainer
The Great Ziegfeld
So, let me start this off by saying that I think Luise Reiner did a fine job. She played the part as it was written with skill and conviction, and she certainly deserved her nomination. She displayed a lot of real emotion, especially in her final scene, which I’ll comment on in a bit. But having seen some of the performances by her fellow nominees, I don’t think she should have taken home the Oscar.
Rainer played the part of Anna Held, Florenz Ziegfeld’s first wife. He met her while talent scouting in England. She was very pretty and petite, though if you look up photos of the woman Rainer was portraying, I think the real Anna Held was more attractive. And one of her trademarks was the ridiculously cinched waist, which was fashionable at the time, which Rainer did not have.
But it wasn’t that. It was that the character was supposed to be an incredibly popular singer, and though Rainer did OK, I just didn’t find her voice to be that good. As a result, I wasn’t buying the character as a stunning performer. I’ve done a little research on the internet, and can’t find any reference to her singing voice being dubbed in the film, though other performers were. If she was dubbed, it wasn’t a very good dub. If it wasn’t, then her performance just wasn’t that impressive. It wasn’t horrible, but I’d just call it mediocre.
But one thing I did read was that there was one scene in particular that won her the Oscar for Best Actress. It was her final scene in which Anna calls Ziegfeld, now her ex-husband, to congratulate him on his new marriage. She is in tears, though she tries to convince him she is happy for him. The frantic, desperate joy in her voice is truly heartbreaking to hear, and her tears were real. To be sure, she did a fantastic job in that one scene, but was it Oscar worthy? I try to look at her entire performance, not just a few minutes of it. The rest of the time, she was very good, but not great. And as I said, I think some of her fellow nominees were better. If it were up to me, I might have voted for Irene Dunne in Theodora Goes Wild, a movie which got far less attention than The Great Ziegfeld, but in its own way, was just as pleasant to watch.