GENA ROWLANDS
(19 June 1930 - 14 August 2024)
The American actress Gena Rowlands, who has died from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, aged 94, was a star actress in every conceivable way. An attractive woman with long blonde hair, she was the one to watch on screen. From 1954 she pursued a career for over sixty years and was mesmeric in films and on television. Her first husband, John Cassavetes, worked with her on ten films in which she was seen at her best. However, she was an extraordinary actress in whatever part she undertook. She was born Virginia Cathryn ‘Gena’ Rowlands in Madison, Wisconsin, to the banker and state legislator Edwin Rowlands and his wife, Mary Allen. The family moved to Washington D.C. in 1939 when Gena’s father joined the US Department of Agriculture, and then to Minneapolis. Gena attended the University of Wisconsin before going to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she met Cassavetes. They married four months later and had three children, Nick, Alexandra and Zoe. It was a stormy marriage but one that obviously helped both in their chosen profession.
Following repertory work, Rowlands made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch in which she also toured. Television took over in 1954 and she worked with her husband on Laramie, Johnny Staccato and Riverboat. Many more TV appearances ensued including Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Peyton Place. Her film debut was in 1958 with The High Cost of Loving, a comedy starring and directed by José Ferrer. Then came a turning point in the careers of both Rowlands and Cassavetes – his first film as director, Shadows. From 1957 he had improvised rehearsals in a piece about race relations in New York City, but a poor reception made him revise it with a full screenplay. A success at Venice, it led to more independent US films being made away from Hollywood. Rowlands had only a small part in the film, as a woman in a nightclub, but Shadows was the start of their successful collaborations.
In the early ‘60s Rowlands worked on Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas, and on The Spiral Road with Rock Hudson. In 1963 she was directed by Cassavetes in A Child is Waiting, about children in a state institution run by Burt Lancaster. Judy Garland had the female lead as a teacher, while Rowlands was the mother of one of the boys. It was a moving film handled with delicacy but not a popular one. Cassavetes then wrote and directed Faces (1968), about the breakdown of a marriage, with Lynn Carlin, John Marley and Rowlands. Financed by Cassavetes, it gained Carlin an Academy Award nomination. In Giuliano Montaldo’s Machine Gun McCain (1969), Cassavetes played the title role of a gangster while Rowlands was his ex-lover and co-partner in crime, but the film was not widely liked. By 1971 Cassavetes had assembled his own repertory company including his wife, Seymour Cassel, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk, etc. Rowlands and Cassel played Minnie and Moskowitz in the film of the same name, about a parking attendant and a museum curator, although Minnie is in an abusive relationship with another man. The film was well-received with Cassavetes being nominated by the Writers Guild of America. Rowlands was the star of Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, a heavy-drinking Los Angeles housewife who meets a man in a bar and wakes up wondering where she is. Having abandoned her kids, she is sectioned in an institution. Peter Falk co-starred and Rowlands was nominated for an Oscar, as was Cassavetes for his direction.
Larry Peerce’s Two-Minute Warning (1976) found both Cassavetes and Rowlands in an action-thriller about a Los Angeles sniper trained on a Championship football match. It starred Charlton Heston with Cassavetes as a police sergeant and Rowlands the wife of a football supporter. Opening Night (1977) had Rowlands as an actress who witnesses the death of a fan, giving her a nervous breakdown. The co-stars were Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondel and Cassavetes, who wrote and directed. Sadly, it was only liked in Europe, although Rowlands and Blondel both earned Golden Globe nominations. In Gloria (1980) she played the ex-squeeze of a gangster, who goes on the run with a boy who has some vital information. Her tour de force performance was Oscar-nominated. With Tempest (1982), Paul Mazursky updated Shakespeare’s play with Cassavetes as a New York architect in a mid-life crisis while his wife (Rowlands) is having an affair with his boss. The film was a big flop. Their last film together was Love Streams (1984) in which they played brother and sister who stay together after their partners have left. It was well-received and won the Golden Bear at Berlin. Rowlands and Cassavetes worked for other directors until 1989 when Cassavetes died aged 59 from cirrhosis. In 2002 Rowlands married the retired businessman Robert Forrest.
Gena Rowlands also worked with Woody Allen on Another Woman, with her son Nick Cassavetes on The Notebook, with Terence Davies on The Neon Bible and she wrote her own script for Quartier Latin, one chapter in Paris, je t’aime, the 2006 portmanteau film made up of 22 shorts. She also continued working on television and won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for portraying Betty Ford in The Betty Ford Story (1987). Her awards include two Oscar nominations, nine Emmys, eight Golden Globes and many other international trophies. In 2015 she had a Lifetime Achievement Award from the LA Film Critics Association and in the same year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally gave her an Honorary Academy Award.
MICHAEL DARVELL