Editing Luise Rainer (section)

===Departure from Hollywood===
[[File:Rainer-Odets-1937-cropped.jpg|thumb|Luise Rainer and [[Clifford Odets]] in January 1937, shortly before their marriage]]
Rainer made her final film appearance for MGM in 1938 and abandoned the film industry. In a 1983 interview, the actress told how she went to Louis B. Mayer's office and said to him: "Mr Mayer, I must stop making films. My source has dried up. I work from the inside out, and there is nothing inside to give."<ref name="spunky">"Actress Luise Rainer stilt spunky at 73" by Bob Thomas, ''Daily Herald'', 13 November 1983, p. 40</ref> Following this altercation, she traveled to Europe, where she helped get aid to children who were victims of the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref name="spunky" /> Nevertheless, she was not released from her contract and, by 1940, she was still bound to make one more film for the studio.<ref>"Hollywood Gossip" by Jimmy Fidler, ''[[The Capital Times]]'', 5 January 1940, p. 2</ref>

Disenchanted with Hollywood, where she later said it was impossible to have an intellectual conversation,<ref name="glamour" /> she moved to New York City in 1940 to live with playwright [[Clifford Odets]], whom she had married in 1937. Rainer had never made it a secret that she felt terrible as Odets' wife, and exclaimed in a 1938 interview: "All the acting I've done on the stage or screen has been nothing compared to the acting I did in New York, when I tried to make everyone think I was happy&nbsp;– and my heart was breaking."<ref>"Luise Rainer To Go On Second Honeymoon", ''The Desert News'', 8 November 1938</ref> She filed for divorce in mid-1938, but proceedings were delayed "to next October" when Odets went to England.<ref>"Divorce Delayed for Luise Rainer", ''[[Pittsburgh Press]]'', 5 July 1938, p. 17</ref> The divorce was final on 14 May 1940. Rainer and Odets summered at [[Pine Brook Country Club]] in [[Nichols Farms Historic District|Nichols, Connecticut]], where numerous other members of the [[Group Theatre (New York)]] also spent the summer of 1936, both acting and writing.<ref>[[Gibson-Brenman, Margaret]]. ''Clifford Odets: American playwright : the years from 1906 to 1940'', Hal Leonard Corp. (2002) p. 410</ref>

Despite the negativity, Rainer was one of the actresses considered for the role of [[Scarlett O'Hara]] in ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone With the Wind]]'' (1939), but the idea was not well-received, and she was not given a [[screen test]]. She also was unable to persuade MGM bosses to cast her in ''Johnny Belinda'', based on a 1940 play about a deaf-mute rape victim.

In a later interview, Rainer commented about her disappearance from the movie industry:

<blockquote>I was very young. There were a lot of things I was unprepared for. I was too honest, I talked serious instead of with my eyelashes and Hollywood thought I was cuckoo. I worked in seven big pictures in three years. I have to be inspired to give a good performance. I complained to a studio executive that the source was dried up. The executive told me, 'Why worry about the source. Let the director worry about that.' I didn't run away from anybody in Hollywood. I ran away from myself.<ref>"Luise Rainer Explains Her Movie Disappearance", ''Waterloo Daily Courier'', 11 March 1951, p. 22</ref></blockquote>