Valerie Harper back on screen despite cancer struggle

This is what a tough cookie Valerie Harper is: Despite her prolonged fight against cancer, she accepted the demanding role of a woman with Alzheimer’s to draw attention to the disease.

The result is “My Mom and the Girl,” a short film written, directed and produced by Susie Singer Carter, who plays opposite Harper in the story drawn from the filmmaker’s experience with her own mother, Norma Holzer.

“The film was joyful to make, as well as emotionally difficult,” Harper said. “There is a real joy to it, as well as sadness.”

Harper etches the disease’s unpredictability as her character, Nanny, whipsaws between awareness and confusion, warmth and anger. Carter portrays her devoted daughter, and the “Girl” in the title is a transgender woman (Harmony Santana) whom Nanny meets when she ventures out on the street one night, as Carter’s mother did. Liz Torres plays an affectionate caregiver.

Carter said the story of her mother’s ongoing experience with Alzheimer’s needed to be told, but “I resisted it for quite a while. I would tell anecdotes about my mom and people would say, ‘You have to do a movie, you have to write that.’”

“‘That’s the last thing I want to do, is live in this world more,’” was Carter’s response. Then she realized she had an obligation to tell the story, “and it all lined up the way it should,” including Harper’s participation. The film’s depiction of Nanny’s undimmed spirit parallels both Holzer’s and Harper’s journeys, Carter said.

It’s Harper’s first time back at work after a series of health setbacks, said Tony Cacciotti, her husband and manager. She was diagnosed in 2013 with leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition that occurs when cancer cells spread into the fluid-filled membrane surrounding the brain, and was given just months to live. She has disproved that prognosis.

“Two or three times, she was out of it, she wasn’t going to survive,” Cacciotti said.

Recently, he said, a drug that had proved a life-saver for the last four years started to lose its effectiveness, and Harper entered a second-stage trial for a new medication.

“She’s a fighter,” Cacciotti said. “I’m amazed every day what she can do, and now she wants to get back to work, which is very exciting.”