The original Anna Held steps from her Packard, and changes my expectations for what I want out of life.
Icon of the Week: Luise Rainer
I came upon Luise Rainer searching through the photographs in the Library of Congress archive a few weeks ago. I have no idea why.
Upon research, it turns out that she is not some essentialized stereotype, as are most of the women found in the Library of Congress Collections—”The Jewess”, “The Civil War Widow”, “The Prematurely Aged Wheat Picker,” “The Queen,” “The Heiress on an Egyptian Excavation”—but rather, she is a bona fide Hollywood star.
Rainer was born on January 12, 1910, to a businessman and an upper-class Jewess (no photo of her mother was found, so I will substitute one of those aforementioned essentialized portraits below).
She is still kicking around in London, which makes her, at 101, the oldest person alive to have won an Academy Award.
