Luise Rainer's Oscar Dress

She was the first actress to win two Oscars and the only (next to Katharine Hepburn) who ever did it back-to-back, but let's focus on the dress Luise Rainer wore to collect her second statue. 

via wifflegif

Luise's performance, albeit brief, in The Great Ziegfeld, had earned her the first Best Actress Oscar for 1936 and she showed up at the ceremony wearing a long white coat dress. When her name was thrown into the mix the following year, for The Good Earth (in the role of the wife of a Chinese farmer, portraying herself in yellowface), she was less inclined to want to attend the ceremony. Nevertheless, it was impressed upon her that she'd need to attend and collect her Oscar in person (in the early days of the Oscars, the winners were announced ahead of time) and she wore this beautifully simply white gown. 

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Here's the thing. This 'beautifully simple gown' as I called it above? It's a nightgown. I'll explain. 

At the time, Luise was married to playwright Clifford Odets, and he was notoriously difficult with her, especially surrounding receiving awards for her work. He did not want her to attend the Oscars that year, but Luise dutifully made an appearance after a big fight with her husband, and grabbed the first outfit she could find in the closet. It was a nightgown. 

She'd later say, according to this Luise Rainer blog, "I made my thank-you speech. I smiled for the countless cameras and reporters. Here I was at dizzying heights, admired and envied: I was as low as I had ever been in my life. I did what I had to do mechanically, I hardly realized I had got the award."

via latest-wrinkle

Luise called the night of her second Oscar win a "weird nightmare of an evening," having arrived late, frazzled after being caught in a downpour, and in the aforementioned nightgown. 

It would be the last time Luise was nominated for an Oscar, as her career petered out afterwards. If you believe in the 'Oscar curse' where winning is something terrible for the winning actor's career, then you'd look no further than Luise to find the biggest example of the curse striking an actor. She became picky with the parts she wanted to make, and by 1938 had made her last film for MGM, telling Louis B. Mayer that she needed to be released from her contract as, "My source has dried up. I work from the inside out, and there is nothing inside to give."