Luise Rainer humble Chinese peasant subservient to her husband and speaking little during the entire film. Her comparative muteness, stated historian Andrew Sarris, was "an astounding tour de force after her hysterically chattering telephone scene in "The Great Ziegfeld"", and contributed to her winning her second Best Actress Oscar. The award made her the first actress to win two consecutive Oscars, a feat not matched until Katharine Hepburn's two wins thirty years later. In later years, however, Rainer felt that winning the two Oscars so early may have been the "worst possible thing" to befall her career. She said that it made
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".