DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Now we're going to remember Gena Rowlands, the actress best known for collaborating with her husband, director John Cassavetes. Their independent films, made in the 1970s and '80s, were often raw and improvised. Rowlands died last week at the age of 94. She played a housewife having a nervous breakdown in "A Woman Under The Influence," a prostitute in "Faces" and a former gangster's moll in "Gloria." She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for two of those dramatic performances.
But her film debut was in the 1958 comedy "The High Cost Of Loving," playing the wife of Jose Ferrer. Here's a scene in which the two are eating breakfast. He's just read something out loud from the newspaper. Now it's her turn to read from the paper. She's trying to let him know she's pregnant, but he's not getting it.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE HIGH COST OF LOVING")
GENA ROWLANDS: (As Ginny Fry) Page one, my section. Mr. and Mrs. Jim Fry, after nine years of marriage, proudly announce that a new baby appears to be on the way.
JOSE FERRER: (As Jim Fry) Oh, imagine that.
ROWLANDS: (As Ginny Fry) Imagine what?
FERRER: (As Jim Fry) What you just read.
ROWLANDS: (As Ginny Fry) What did I just read?
FERRER: (As Jim Fry) About those people getting married.
ROWLANDS: (As Ginny Fry) I didn't say that. I said after nine years of marriage, a baby. A B-A-B-Y baby.
BIANCULLI: Here's another clip. Gena Rowlands is in the 1974 film "A Woman Under The Influence." She plays a suburban housewife with three kids, and she's having an emotional breakdown. She's become hysterical, and her husband, played by Peter Falk, slaps and then hugs her.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE")
PETER FALK: (As Nick Longhetti) You're going to be committed. Go to the hospital until you get better.
ROWLANDS: (As Mabel Longhetti) I'm not sore at you. I mean, you hit me. You never did that before. I feel like if that's what you feel bad about, I always understood you, and you always understood me. And it was always just how it was, and that's it. Till death do us part, Nick. You said it. Remember? He said, do you, Mabel Mortensen, take this man? I do. I do, Nick. I do. Remember? I said it's going to work because I'm already pregnant.
FALK: (As Nick Longhetti) Don't let that mind run away on you now.
ROWLANDS: (As Mabel Longhetti) Do you remember how you laughed?
FALK: (As Nick Longhetti) Don't make me...
ROWLANDS: (As Mabel Longhetti) You laughed.
FALK: (As Nick Longhetti) Don't.
ROWLANDS: (As Mabel Longhetti) Do you remember it? And he was mad as a big toad.
FALK: (As Nick Longhetti) Don't do that.
ROWLANDS: (As Mabel Longhetti) Hey. Don't be sad. I know you love me.
BIANCULLI: In the 1980 film "Gloria," Rowlands plays a woman who had been connected to the Mafia. She's asked by neighbors, who know that they're about to be executed by the Mob, to take care of their 6-year-old son, but the Mob wants the boy because his parents have given him the book they kept on Mafia business. Gloria doesn't have maternal feelings. In this scene, she's on the street and is trying to ditch the kid when a car full of mobsters pulls up. She's carrying a gun in her purse.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GLORIA")
JOHN FINNEGAN: (As Frank) Gloria.
ROWLANDS: (As Gloria Swenson) Yes?
FINNEGAN: (As Frank) You know, we're not interested in you. All we want is the book and the kid. Do you understand?
ROWLANDS: (As Gloria Swenson) Sure.
FINNEGAN: (As Frank) Gloria, why don't you take a walk? We'll take care of that kid. You got that book, kid? Come here.
ROWLANDS: (As Gloria Swenson) Hey, Frank. What are you going to do? Shoot a 6-year-old Puerto Rican kid on the street? You don't know nothing. He don't even speak English.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNS FIRING)
BIANCULLI: That isn't the last time in the film she opens fire on the mobsters and gets away with it, by the way. Terry talked with Gena Rowlands in 1996.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: "Gloria" was, in a way, a really out-of-character film for you. It's an action film, in a way, and, you know, you're pretty handy with a gun in the film.
ROWLANDS: (Laughter).
GROSS: Not your typical role. Did you enjoy that change of pace?
ROWLANDS: I loved it. It was such a fantasy. I mean, here I am, and I'm going to take on the whole Mafia and beat them. It's just sort of an incredible power trip.
GROSS: While being very motherly at the same time.
(LAUGHTER)
ROWLANDS: Yes, while being very motherly at that time, but it was - I remember it was so strange, carrying that gun at first, and then after a while, 'cause I always carried it in my purse so I could shoot through the purse if I needed to - Gloria, I'm speaking of, not me - and then afterwards, I was carrying the purse, because, you know, the prop man comes and takes it from you so there won't be an accident, or anything, at every occasion, and then, all of a sudden, my purse would seem very light. And I thought, my, you get used to things very quickly. It was - the whole thing was - and it was a tough picture physically, because I was running around in those four-inch-heeled sandals and carrying a child over my shoulder, and running through Harlem in, you know, 98 degrees heat and 1,000 humidity or something, so that it was a picture you got into shape very quickly.
GROSS: "A Woman Under The Influence," directed by your late husband, John Cassavetes - you played a woman married to a character played by Peter Falk. And you're having, like, a nervous breakdown, and you just, like, unravel more and more as the movie goes on. Had you seen somebody going through that before taking on the role, somebody who you could think about while doing the movie?
ROWLANDS: Not one person. You know, I wasn't thinking of one person. A part is like reading a detective story. You don't write it. You don't start it in the middle. You interpret it, and very often, you find things that they're doing - the character that you're doing - that puzzles you, and you wonder how and why, and so you take as much of - because I believe that all of us have every quality, all of us. It's a matter of degree, and acting is a matter of increasing the degree or decreasing.
But it's always there, and you can always find it inside of you and think about things that you've seen and heard and people you've known. And all you need is just a little. It can be like a little piece of rice. But once you have the feeling, then you can enlarge it and take it where you wish to.
GROSS: You and your late husband, John Cassavetes, were making independent films before, I think, there was even a name for it. I mean...
ROWLANDS: Yes.
GROSS: You were really pioneers of that in the movie industry. Why did you start? Why did you start finding your own little niche away from the larger industry?
ROWLANDS: Well, of course, as you say, you don't think of yourself as a pioneer, or even you don't think of yourself in any particular way. It's just that you want to express a different kind of story, a different kind of - we felt that there's so much more that could be said on film and that films could be much more personal to the audience, that you could do pictures that were actually something that people would relate to because it was in their own lives, that - because all of them, really, essentially are about love and the loss of love or how to survive love or how to find love or how to keep love or, you know, what you do with it, which is really the eternal problem for all of us. And we thought it could be shown in a more natural setting, a more accessible way rather than just, say, an action film or, you know, some...
GROSS: A glamorous romance.
ROWLANDS: ...Escape - yeah, escape film. But it's not that we wanted them to stop doing that kind of film. We just felt that there was a lot of room for a lot of kinds of film.
GROSS: Could you describe a little bit about what the guidelines for improvisation were within the films that you made with John Cassavetes? How much improvisation was there? What were the parameters for that?
ROWLANDS: The first film that he made, "Shadows," was entirely improvised. I wasn't in that. And so then he did develop a reputation from that as doing everything improvisation. But actually, after that, he always had a script and, you know, not just a thrown-together script, a real script. But then when we would have - if you'd have a problem with the scene or - John's theory was that if he got a bunch of good actors together and there was a problem, then it was the writer's problem. So then we would stop and talk about it, rehearse, improvise and, you know, work about it as much as we needed to. And then when we thought we had it, he'd go in and sit down and write the scene from the improvisation the way he wanted it. And that's how we did most of them, not all of them. There were lots of improvisations all the way through to the last films that we made. But mainly, they were very scripted.
GROSS: And so even the parts that were improvised - by the time you did the final take, it had been scripted based on the improvisation.
ROWLANDS: Mostly. I was thinking of one that is just the opposite of that. In our last picture, "Love Streams," I played a woman who loved too much - loved her husband too much, loved her children too much. I did everything too much. She just drove everybody crazy with her excessiveness. It says in the script that she calls the husband home from a business meeting and the child home from school because she knows that they are not getting enough fun out of life. So they come home thinking something important is happening. And then there's just this one little sentence, really. And it said, she - they come home and sit down. She makes them laugh. And I said, what does that mean, John? And how does she make them laugh? He said, don't worry about it. He said, I've got something great planned. You're going to love it. I said, well, do you have any hints or anything? He said, no. He said, I don't want to ruin it for you. He said, just wait. And I said, this is making me hysterical. He said, no, I'm telling you. He said, I don't want to even give it away. So we got to the day that we were going to shoot, and he said, stay in a dressing room. I don't want you to see the preparations. And now I just - I really was truly hysterical. And finally, he came, and he said, OK. He said, now come on out. And we were shooting in the backyard of this beautiful home. And they was Seymour Cassell and Risa Blewitt, who are playing my husband and child, and they're both sitting there. And they had a long picnic table. And on top of the picnic table, there are about a hundred of those - you know, those crazy little games that you see, you know, those clattering, chattering false teeth and eyes that pop out on springs and ketchup bottles that look like they're getting stuff all over you - all that terrible - those joke store games. And John said, there. What do you think? I said, what do you mean what do I think? What am I supposed to do here? He said, make them laugh. I said, with these? I said, which ones? He said, all of them. He said, we got a minute to shoot it. He said, and use every one. Make them laugh, and then go jump off the diving board into the pool. So I said, well, shall we rehearse? He said, no, no, no, no. He said, I don't want to ruin the spontaneity of it. He said, OK, roll it. And so I just wildly started, you know, with the eyes and the ketchup. And the thing - and, of course, he had already told them not to laugh because in their characters, they were not amused that they'd been brought home, you know? And so now I got wilder and wilder, trying, you know, just anything. Then finally, the minute had gone by, and I went and jumped off the diving board. Then, of course, I realized why I was jumping off the diving board - 'cause he had planned that they weren't going to laugh. Now, that kind of improvisation was quite rare because there was no rehearsal. There was no talking. There was nothing. It was just - you just went for it. And, you know, he was right. It was more fun to do that scene. It's when - I look back on it with a lot of happiness.
BIANCULLI: Gena Rowlands speaking with Terry Gross in 1996 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1996 interview with actress Gena Rowlands. She was best known for her independent film collaborations with her director husband, John Cassavetes. She went on to play the title role in the TV movie "The Betty Ford Story" and starred opposite James Garner in the film "The Notebook." Rowlands received an honorary Oscar in 2015. She died last week at the age of 94.
GROSS: Your father, I believe, was a state senator when you were growing up. Do I have that right?
ROWLANDS: Yes.
GROSS: You know...
ROWLANDS: In Wisconsin.
GROSS: In Wisconsin - and this was U.S. Senate. Oh, state senator.
ROWLANDS: No, no.
GROSS: Right - in a state Senate.
ROWLANDS: A state Senate...
GROSS: OK.
ROWLANDS: ...Progressive Party, which...
GROSS: Oh.
ROWLANDS: ...Doesn't exist anymore.
GROSS: Oh.
ROWLANDS: It was a La Follette party.
GROSS: Did you ever have to be the model daughter while your father was in politics? Or is that also too far in the past to remember?
ROWLANDS: Well, I was a - I was not a hard child because I was a sick child. I was an invalid when I was little. And so, you know, I wasn't much of a handful. I was lying around, looking pale and reading books and things. So that - I don't think that it was the same as if they had to trot me out, you know, with my little velveteen collar on or anything. I wasn't very involved in it.
GROSS: What were you sick with?
ROWLANDS: I don't - some weird kidney disease. And then that went into double pneumonia. And then that went into something. I think - what I really think is I - my immune system probably was just not very developed and - because when I got to be a teenager, I've never been sick again. And - I don't know - it was just one thing after another, but they were all very kind of serious things - asthma and all of those things. But then they just all kind of magically went away. So I think something just kicked in.
GROSS: Were you very unhappy during the period that you were sick?
ROWLANDS: No, I wasn't. I would like to have gone to school more in that sense, but I always was very happy reading. And everybody - you know, when you have a sickly kid, everybody's awfully nice to you. And they probably would have been anyway. But my mother would - in order to make me eat anything, she would go to all kind of extremes. I remember one - (laughter) I remember one time, I wouldn't eat carrots. I wouldn't eat anything yellow. So she cut a carrot into the shape of a goldfish...
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROWLANDS: ...And with a long tail. And then she put it in a goldfish bowl with a - with water in it. And she came into where I was sick, and she said, I have an uncontrollable urge. She said, I can't stand it. I have - I've got to eat this goldfish. I've got to do it. I'm going to - I said, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do it. She said, I've got to, unless you'll eat this carrot. And so I said, oh, all right (laughter), you know? But they would go to the most extraordinary kind of creative lengths...
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROWLANDS: ...To do these things for me. I really had a pretty happy childhood.
GROSS: Oh, that sounds wonderful.
ROWLANDS: It was.
GROSS: Did you write for comic books before acting?
ROWLANDS: Yes, when I went to New York, and I worked. And then I - then I was out of a job. And so I got a job. Mr. Gleason - Lev Gleason - gave me a job writing "Crime Does Not Pay" comics.
(LAUGHTER)
ROWLANDS: I wrote for a long time, too, about a year or so.
GROSS: These were, like, action comics with a moral message.
ROWLANDS: Yes. I always, of course, gave them an uplifting ending...
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROWLANDS: ...A sudden conversion.
GROSS: And when did you get seriously interested in acting?
ROWLANDS: When I was about 14. I was living in Virginia, and I won a scholarship to a local repertory theater in Washington, D.C. - Arlington's, you know, just outside of D.C. And so I - it was a wonderful, wonderful repertory, too. I mean, they tried the harder stuff. Talk about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. We were doing Joan of Arc and "L'Aiglon" and "Richard III." And I was Richard, too. So, I mean, you...
GROSS: (Laughter).
ROWLANDS: They had an open mind and a marvelous, marvelous teacher. And I was the young one. They - most of the guys were in their 20s. And it was serious. We all took it very seriously and worked very hard for several years there.
GROSS: Gena Rowlands, thank you so much for talking with us.
ROWLANDS: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
BIANCULLI: Gena Rowlands, recorded in 1996. She died last week at the age of 94. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film "Close Your Eyes" by the Spanish director who made the classic film "The Spirit Of The Beehive." This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ART BLAKEY AND THE JAZZ MESSENGERS' "JIMERICK") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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