Acting taught me a lesson – Winnipeg Free Press

Opinion

If you don't drive too fast, Madison, Wisconsin, is an 11-hour drive from Winnipeg's Confusion Corner.

I don't need Google to tell me. I did. I saw a lot of interesting things and people in this beautiful university town, which also happens to be the state capital. I wish I could tell you that I had lunch there with a wonderful actress who was born there. But I didn't.

When Gena Rowlands died this week, less than a month after her 94th birthday, I wanted to read more about her origins. I assumed she was from the heartland of America. But when I found out she was from Wisconsin, I felt joy.

I've had a soft spot for Wisconsin for nearly half a century, and it wasn't because of its fascinating politics, the Green Bay Packers, or the Miller beer that made Milwaukee famous. It was The Young and the Restless, the world's most-watched soap opera, set in the fictional town of Genoa City, Wisconsin.

Michelle Stafford is one of the most famous faces. She has played Phyllis Summers for almost 30 years – and the role of Gena Rowlands in “A Woman under the Influence”, the defining film of her career, inspired her to become an actress.

Although Rowlands won four Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes, A Woman Under the Influence was the closest she came to an Oscar. She was nominated for Best Actress. When a very young Michelle Stafford saw this 1974 hit, it inspired her and no doubt many other young women to try their hand at acting. “She was my acting inspiration. She was beyond spectacular throughout. A true original,” Stafford posted on Instagram.

I have to tell you that I was not motivated to write about Ms. Rowlands because of where she grew up and because she was an inspiration to others. The big issue in this room is Alzheimer's. Gena Rowlands lived with it for the last five years of her life. As all the official entertainment industry publications have reported, she died this week in Indian Wells, California, from the complications that afflict the human body when Alzheimer's hampers the mind.

It was “The Notebook” a film about Alzheimer's that starred Gena Rowlands 20 years ago that forced me to avoid political analysis this Saturday.”The notebook“” was directed by her son Nick Cassavetes. Other leading roles were played by Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, James Garner and Sam Shepard.

I don't want to give too much away by giving you too detailed a description of the film, but I must tell you that the film was therapeutic for me, as it was for so many family members who suffer from Alzheimer's. It was released in 2004, the same year my father received the dreaded diagnosis.

Mike Adler was a hunted man in 1944. The country where he was born had betrayed him. Hungary joined Hitler's Nazi empire. The Hungarian government was initially a reluctant accomplice to genocide. But as the war drew to a close, Hitler insisted that Hungary develop an enthusiasm for mass deportations and mass murder.

Over 800,000 Jews lived in Hungary before the country cooperated with Hitler. Over half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered. Among them were my father's parents, two siblings and many other members of his extended family.

In 1944, a Catholic friend of my father took a big risk and asked my father not to show up at the train station for deportation to Auschwitz. He smuggled my father across the Hungarian border into Romania. And there Mike Adler worked as a farm laborer until the Soviets showed up, picked him up and put him on a train to Siberia, where he spent three years in Stalin's Gulag.

When I was a little boy and my father was looking after me, I thought he was Superman. He escaped the ovens of Auschwitz and survived three years in the hell of Siberia. What on earth couldn't Mike Adler have accomplished?

Tragically, my Superman father faced his kryptonite in his eighties. Alzheimer's succeeded where Hitler and Stalin failed. And it was Gena Rowlands, in the role of dementia patient Allie, who helped me to form an emotional connection to what my father's spirit was experiencing.

Thank you, Mike Adler, for marrying my mother and giving me life. Thank you, Gena Rowlands, for helping me read the final chapter of Mike Adler's life.

Rest in peace, Mrs. Rowlands.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commentator and podcaster. [email protected]

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