Irving Thalberg as a Chinese peasant, she was required to act totally subservient to her husband, being perpetually huddled in submission, and barely spoke a word of dialogue during the entire film. Rainer recalls that Mayer did not approve of the film being produced or her part in it: "He was horrified at Irving Thalberg's insistence for me to play O-lan, the poor uncomely little Chinese peasant." However, she again won the Oscar for Best Actress, becoming the first actress to win two consecutive Oscars, a feat not matched until Katharine Hepburn's two Oscar wins thirty years later. Besides bringing a distinctive
Kate Burton (actress) for a short stint until Estabrook reassumed the role. During the summer of 2010, Burton portrayed actress Katharine Cornell in A.R. Gurney's "The Grand Manner" at Lincoln Center in New York. In April, 2017, she began playing Liz Essendine in the Broadway revival of "Present Laughter," the play in which she made her debut. Burton's first screen appearance was in the 1969 film "Anne of the Thousand Days," starring her father, with whom she later appeared as Alice opposite his White Knight in the 1983 Great Performances broadcast of "Alice in Wonderland," and in the 1984 CBS miniseries "Ellis Island".