Luise Rainer, a German-born actor who made cinema history by winning back-to-back Oscars as best actress for the 1936 musical The Great Ziegfeld and the 1937 drama The Good Earth during a brief, stormy Hollywood career, died yesterday at age 104.

Rainer, a former star of the Vienna stage who had been the oldest living actress to have won an Academy Award, died of pneumonia in London, her daughter Francesca Bowyer said. "She was an extraordinary woman who will undoubtedly leave an indelible print on the industry," said Ms Bowyer.

Rainer enjoyed a meteoric rise in Hollywood followed by an equally dramatic fall after she clashed with imperious Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B Mayer over his iron-fisted control over her career.

After being assigned a succession of parts she did not like and being denied ones she wanted, Rainer contentiously parted ways with MGM in 1938. – (Reuters)