The Age of Adaline & Quentin Collins

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Hey, gang,

I just saw “The Age of Adaline,” an excellent film featuring Blake Lively, Ellen Burstyn, Harrison Ford and Kathy Baker. Blake Lively stars as Adaline Bowman, a 29-year-old woman, born in 1908, who, as a result of a car accident and being simultaneously struck by lightning in 1937, literally ceases to age and remains a youthful woman.

The film explores how the ever-youthful Adaline is forced to move from city to city, change her name and avoid anyone who might know her from her earlier life. She has a daughter, who is nearly 80-years-old as the still youthful Adaline hits age 105.

As I watched this film, I was reminded of Quentin Collins’ similar ageless situation as a result of Count Petofi’s spell and Charles Delaware Tate’s portrait of Quentin. Quentin was about 27-years-old when we first saw him in 1897. For 72 years, Quentin moved from place to place, with pseudonyms like “Grant Douglas,” very much like Adaline Bowman until he ended up back in Collinsport. That would make him 99-years-“young.”

I wonder if Quentin saw this film, would it strike too close to home for him? How about if a bored Quentin just happened to catch a double-feature of “The Age of Adaline” and “The Green Mile” at the Collinsport Cinema? In the latter film, former prison guard Paul Edgecomb is apparently punished by God to live up to the age of 108 after having participated in the execution of the innocent John Coffey, a man, blessed with Divine healing
powers. Paul Edgecomb is forced to see everyone he loves eventually die as he lingers on in a nursing home.

How could Quentin stand to see his siblings Judith and Edward, his niece and nephew Nora and Jamison and even his own daughter and probably her own children all pass on before him as he never ages? Heck, even Carolyn Stoddard-Hawkes, David Collins and Maggie Evans would obviously notice Quentin’s Dorian Gray-like youthfulness today in 2022. I suppose both Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman would also both be dead by now.

On the dvd commentaries on “The Age of Adaline,” actress Ellen Burstyn, who portray’s  Adaline’s 80-year-old daughter, says that she would hate to live presumably forever like Adaline Bowman in the film. I’ve always thought the ever-youthful Quentin Collins situation was problematic, especially if DS had continued on for several more years.

People often say that it’s no fun getting old. But, in Quentin’s case, I wonder if he would gladly succumb to the infirmities of the aging process and the eventual conclusion of life rather than to live on and see everyone you
ever loved die before you?

[Gerard]

Bob, I remember watching an episode of The Waltons when Olivia (the mother) takes a college course and the teacher is none other than Quentin Collins!  (Well, David Selby.)  I pretended that he was, indeed, Quentin living in disguise with another fake name and here he was, in the 1930's, probably in his mid-sixties, but looking like he's still in his late 20's/early 30's. 

Gerard

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Gerard,

I think I saw Quentin (or “Grant Douglas”) on that episode of “The Waltons.” Didn’t John-Boy and some of the other kids suspect something was “going on” between their mother and Quentin/Grant, sort of like between Quentin and Laura Collins? 

I wonder if years later, Quentin posed as an undercover NYPD narcotics detective with Ron Liebman? And, then posed as aspiring novelist Candice Bergen’s exasperated husband? And, finally as an overbearing millionaire, who tries to have his son’s sailing school instructor/captain charged with negligence after several students and the sailboat are lost during a powerful storm. I tell you, Quentin was better off when he was just a gigolo and informant for the Cairo police.