Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is plainly wonderful, and stars Annette Bening, who is plainly wonderful, as Gloria Grahame, a one-time Hollywood movie star who in later life hits on hard times — ‘a big name in black and white. Not doing too well in colour,’ comments her landlady at one point — and embarks on a romance with a young English actor who is 30 years her junior. It is based on a true memoir. It is a love story, told tenderly, bravely, smartly, movingly. And believably. Older women, it seems, can be interesting, complicated, vital, attractive and sexual. Who knew? (But don’t spread the word, or they’ll all want to be like that, and won’t take the shitty bit-parts any more.)
The memoir is by Peter Turner, who was an aspiring, twenty-something Liverpudlian actor when he first met 56-year-old Grahame in London in 1979 — we’ll see him take her to the pub for a pint of bitter; 45p! — but the film opens a couple of years later when they are no longer together, and she is due to appear on stage in the provinces somewhere. She had roles in It’s A Wonderful Life and Oklahoma!, won an Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful, and once lived in the mansion next door to Bogart and Bacall, but those days are gone.
However, she never makes it on stage. Instead, she suddenly collapses and calls Peter (played by Jamie Bell) to ask if she might ‘recover’ in his family’s Liverpool home. She has nowhere else to go. The timeline then splits between the now, as Gloria is dying, in effect, and flashbacks to their short-lived but intensely passionate and believable affair. You don’t doubt, for a minute, that he would fancy the pants off her.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in