Luise Rainer — I Haven't Even Started Yet! (1938) 🇺🇸

Luise Rainer — I Haven't Even Started Yet! (1938) | www.vintoz.com

October 31, 2022

Luise Rainer lives in a three-room apartment at the top of a modern construction that climbs up the slope of a hill in Westwood. Her domestic staff consists of Hortense, who comes in the morning and leaves at night. The only other member of the household is Johnny, her beloved pooch.

by Gladys Hall

She lives in an apartment because she doesn’t want to be bothered with twenty-two rooms and a retinue. She lives in this apartment, because it brings to her the outdoors she loves. Her piano, her flowers, her shelves of books and the records of great musicians, her blue- and gold-covered chairs and couches make the living-room a pleasant place. What sends your spirit soaring, though, are the sky and hills, the church-spires and scudding clouds seen through a wall of clear glass — an ever-changing vista of natural beauty and as integral a part of the room as anything it holds.

Not only in Hollywood but everywhere, people are prone to measure by a pattern. It’s easier. Stars have grand establishments. Rainer has no grand establishment. Stars go to the “Troc.” Rainer doesn’t go to the “Troc.” The logical conclusion would be, Rainer is no star. Since Rainer is undeniably a star, one must get round the problem somehow. Aha — we have it. Rainer’s a poseur. Rainer’s got to be different. That’s why she lives in an apartment, that’s why she doesn’t dance at the “Troc.” Clear as a mud fence, and now we can all go happily on to the ball.

You wouldn’t have to seek far below the surface to realize that this is as fair as most snap judgments. You needn’t do more than watch without prejudice the small eager face, dark eyes glowing with an earnestness that can’t be feigned; you needn’t do more than listen with your mind as well as your ears, to recognize the passionate honesty that lies at her core.

Rainer is first, always and ardently, an individualist. She does what she does, not in bravado, not to make an impression, but because for her it’s the right thing to do. She would rather not live than live contrary to the law of her nature. By both instinct and intense conviction she acts on the counsel of Polonius: “To thine own self be true.” All the king’s horses, all the mumbo-jumbo of Hollywood, all hell and highwater couldn’t swerve her.

A small figure like us is enough already to stand, but two like that — that is nearly unbearable, no? Still we stand it. We have both our life very much for ourselves, and still we know that we are there for each other, and what is more wonderful to know for two people in marriage?”

In New York they have a penthouse. “Half of a penthouse,” says Mrs. Odets. “It’s beautiful — like this —” with sweep of her arm toward the view. “Only on the thirty-second floor and it overlooks whole New York. I tell you something funny. I have a very decided taste, and Cliff was afraid to furnish it himself, but he went and did it anyhow because he wanted me to come in it furnished. He wrote me: ‘Your apartment will be like this.’ When I saw it, I laughed so much. It was not like this at all but very masculine. How could it be otherwise? He is a man, and cannot turn to be a woman, thanks God, even for love — “But now, when I go permanent, we are taking the second half of the penthouse. There is an apartment right next to ours which will be free next fall, at least so we hope. Then we break the wall through, and make a door in there. You see, we haven’t started yet our life together. So far it was only a visit. I visited my husband, and my husband visited his wife. Since two years we are visiting each other. Now slowly we start our home together, our life together —”

I asked whether children were included in her scheme of things. Again came that glance, half-mirthful, half-chiding, but her words were straightforward and sincere. “I will have children, that is sure. How could I have none? I can’t think of having my life without it, because they are natural as the breath that comes from my mouth.” Then the laughter brimmed over. “Only I don’t want to speak about that yet.”

Luise and her playwright spouse, Clifford Odets, have been married two years, and are planning to start a home. Up to now it has been a case of one visiting the other

Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, June 1938