News has broke about Luise Rainer, the award-winning Hollywood star of the 1930s, and how she passed away in her home in London at 104-years-old. According to her daughter, Francesca Knittel Bowyer, the late mother and actress died of pneumonia.

Luise was a Jewish child caught between the unfortunate World War I and World War II eras. She was a young star in Vienna and Berlin, until she heard Hitler on the radio in 1933. It was then that she was ready to sail to America, away from the Nazis. In 1934, an MGM scout signed her, and the following year, she found herself in the United States.

Luise won her first Academy Award for her role in the musical production, 'The Great Ziegfeld'. Although she played a small part, her acting of Anna Held, the wife of the showman Florenz Ziegfeld, was phenomenal. Her most captivating scene from the film was said to be done in a single take, and its essence captured the Oscar. In the scene, Anna struggles to congratulate Ziegfeld on his marriage to Billie Burke through her tears. When she hangs up the telephone, she is filmed collapsing into heartbroken sobs.

Luise has also won an Oscar after her role in 'The Good Earth', in which she played the serious peasant wife, O-Lan.

In the summer of 1945, the award-winning actress remarried to New York publisher, Robert Knittel. They had one daughter together, Francesca. Luise is also survived by two granddaughters, and two great-grandchildren.

On a side note, Luise and her husband were very happy together. The great actress reportedly loved to travel, read, watch plays, and most of all, mountain climb - a hobby that her husband taught her before his death in 1989.