A Woman Without Peers: Gena Rowlands (1930&2024)

“You change your energy and allow another person to haunt your house, so to speak. It’s like being a medium. It left me exhausted and depressed-feeling. Some of the time, when you’re walking out there where the air is thin, you just hope you can walk back again.” – Gena Rowlands on playing Mabel in “A Woman Under the Influence” In the early years of Gena Rowlands' career, there was no sense that she was "walking out there where the air is thin". She was a beautiful blonde playing beautiful blonde roles, but she lived on our plane of existence. If you watch closely, though, other qualities leak through the conventional material. Maybe there's a glimpse of her bad temper. You could imagine her throwing a tantrum. Maybe it's a grumpy eyeroll, snuck in between lines. There's a latent unruliness there, somewhere. Rowlands was not cast as wise-cracking dames early on, but the wise-cracking dame had a way of making herself known.  Whether or not this is retrospect talking is an interesting question. Are we projecting onto her things that were only apparent later when she awed the world with her performances in the films directed by her husband, John Cassavetes ("Faces," "Minnie and Moskowitz," "A Woman Under the Influence," "Opening Night," "Gloria," and "Love Streams")? If she hadn't met and married Cassavetes, what would have happened? Speculation is pointless, but it helps contextualize what happened, and her equal part in it.  There will always be a place in Hollywood for beautiful blondes. Rowlands wasn't a Marilyn-Monroe type. She was one of those "chilly" blondes, the kind Hitchcock loved. Rowlands was not a haughty person, but she often played characters with a whiff of standoffishness. Hollywood isn't known for its sensitive handling of beautiful talented blondes, but it's easy to imagine that Gena Rowlands, who loved acting ("I never wanted to do anything else. This was it."), would have had a respectable career, with or without her husband. Cassavetes didn't lift her out of obscurity. Nevertheless, she wasn't being seen the way she needed to be seen. The world didn't yet know what it was missing.  Rowlands was born in 1930 in Madison, Wisconsin. Except for a somewhat mysterious "breakdown" when she was around twelve years old, she had a fairly happy time of it. After graduating from the University of Madison, Rowlands moved to New York City to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was determined to not let her dream get derailed: “In those days, if you got married, you had children and quit what you were doing. I wanted to be an actress bad enough that I would forego the comfort of love. I was going to be very careful. So I went in to lunch and put my books in my locker and I saw John Cassavetes. And I thought, Oh damn, not this. This is just exactly what I don’t want.” They married in 1954. She performed in repertory companies and made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch. Her performance on Broadway as Betty, in Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, opposite Edward G. Robinson, made her a New York theatre star. Both she and Cassavetes were busy working actors through the '50s. Their son, Nick, was born in 1959, the same year Cassavetes' first film, "Shadows", was released. In Cassavetes' third film, "A Child is Waiting," starring Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster, Rowlands played another chilly blonde, but the material has some depth, and she brings a tightly-coiled restlessness to the part, a sense of this woman's guilt and shame.  "Faces" in 1968, was the game-changer. For Rowlands, for Cassavetes, for American movies. "Faces" opens, startlingly, with a huge closeup of Rowlands, looking like she's caught in the middle of a moment, alert and startled. Her Jeannie has a sharp edge, and there's something hard in her eyes, a wary toughness. Her laughter is forced, almost hysterical. The man she's with (Val Avery) asks her to "stop being silly", and to just "be herself". An abyss opens up. What does "being herself" even mean? Her beauty is part of the problem, and she knows it. She's a "looker" but no one sees her. Jeannie perceives the man's flaws and unhappiness in one glance, and her smile is tender and pitying, almost maternal. With Rowlands, a moment was never just one thing. It - and she - was always in flux.  She sometimes drove a scene, dancing and kicking up her heels, her thick blonde mop of hair swinging around her face. There are moments where she almost looks directly at the camera in "Faces". Rowlands does versions of this in other performances, and it's always unexpected. In “A Woman Under the Influence", Rowlands' Mabel makes all of these weird sounds and gestures, and these often read as being asides for an invisible audience - i.e. us. She's practically rolling her eyes at us. In "Opening Night", Myrtle (Rowlands) breaks the fourth wall during the actual opening night, turning to the audience to react to whatever was just said. Rowlands got lost in a role, but she broug