A very unlikely love affair
He was a jobbing working-class actor from Liverpool. She was an Oscar-winning femme fatale 29 years his senior. So how come they had an affair and why, when she was dying, did Gloria Grahame end up in his parents’ council house?
Hurrying away from my parents’ house and arriving at the Liverpool Playhouse, where i was due on stage, the last thing i felt like doing that night was acting in a play.
My mood wasn’t improved when i was spotted by the gossipy old stage manager as i hurried towards the dressing room. ‘Sorry, i’m late,’ i said. ‘i’ve got a bit of a problem.’ ‘Like to tell uncle Jack all about it?’ ‘no, thanks,’ i replied. ‘it’s a bit personal.’ ‘i’m always interested to know what’s happening,’ he said, angling for something juicy. i could see that he wasn’t going to give up.
‘Look,’ i said. ‘if you really must know, there’s someone staying back at my mum and dad’s house and she’s dying.’ ‘Anyone i know?’ ‘i shouldn’t think so. She’s American. She’s a film star.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘Film stars don’t die in Liverpool.’
His scepticism was understandable. And if Liverpool was an unexpected place for one of the Hollywood greats to meet her end, still less likely was the fact that she was lying in my parents’ spare bedroom.
There, the glamorous femme fatale who had once lived next-door to Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in America was struggling through the last hours of her life in a flowery cotton nightdress that belonged to my mother.
it all seemed so surreal. But, then, so was much of what had happened in the three years since i’d first crossed paths with gloria grahame, the Oscar-winning actress who’d worked with some of the silver screen’s biggest names, among them Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston and Joan Crawford.
First friends and then lovers, we were an unlikely couple, and not just because she was almost 30 years older than me and had been married four times.
i was one of nine children and had grown up in a Liverpool council house. She was the daughter of a determined Los Angeles stage mother who taught elocution and dance and had coached her relentlessly until she won a contract at MgM. By
THe time i was born in 1952, gloria was at the peak of a career that included appearances in such classics as it’s A Wonderful Life, The Bad And The Beautiful (for which she won an Academy Award for best supporting actress) and Oklahoma!
i didn’t think i’d seen any of them. But lodged in the back of my memory was a film about a circus and a train crash. i now know that movie to be The greatest Show On earth, in which gloria played a wisecracking elephant handler.
One rainy Sunday afternoon i’d watched it on the telly as a little boy. i never could have imagined then that one of its stars would one day be sitting alongside me in my parents’ living room — an area reserved for strangers and important people.
its proud focus was a sideboard with glass doors, behind which was displayed the hoard of ornaments given to my mother over the years by family members who had been to such exotic locations as Blackpool or the isle of Man.
At each end of the sideboard stood two chalk black cats, which promised good luck from ireland, and between them, on one leg, was a flamenco dancer in a black, twirling frock, brought back by my sister Maisie from Benidorm.
gloria would have been far less surprised at finding herself in that unlikely setting. On-screen she often played the floozie, and her love-life off-screen was no more conventional — as demonstrated by the fact that she was then with me.
i wonder, though, what she’d have made of our relationship becoming the subject of its own Hollywood movie, released next month.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is based on the book i wrote a few years after gloria’s death, and in it we are played by Annette Bening and Jamie Bell — of Billy elliot fame — with Kenneth Cranham and Julie Walters as my parents.
As the film relates, we met in 1978 when i was 26 and living in a small, rented room at the top of a theatrical boarding house near regent’s Park in London. i was a struggling actor and gloria, who was 55 and over here working on a play, was staying in the spacious ground-floor apartment.
i wondered why this celebrated actress i’d never heard of was not staying at the ritz or somewhere equally fancy. i didn’t know then that she had little money to spare.
each morning, as i passed through the hallway setting off to my ‘betweenacting jobs’, i’d hear strange sounds coming from behind her door: ‘Loo Poo Boo Moo. Lah Pah Bah Mah.’
i was curious to meet the woman behind these weird voice exercises, but had to ask the landlady who she was.
‘Of course you know who she is, dahling,’ she said, pouring herself a gin. ‘everybody’s heard of gloria grahame. She’s been in every Hollywood film. She always played a tart.’
One morning, gloria opened her door and found me hovering in the hall. ‘Oh, hi. Have you seen Saturday night Fever?’ ‘yes,’ i replied. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said. ‘in that case you can come in and help me practise the disco moves we’re doing in my dance class.’
As we danced in time to the music of Stayin’ Alive, her movements were rhythmic and slick, her voice lending every word a seductive, breathy lisp.
She wasn’t wearing fancy clothes,
just a t-shirt and jeans, and hardly any make-up. But she looked sensational. Dark glasses and stilettos added an extra touch of glamour, and i was dazzled by her style.
eventually i had to leave for work. ‘maybe i’ll catch you later,’ she said, putting her tongue against the roof of her mouth and throwing her hair back and to one side. that was the Grahame look — and it certainly worked on me.
From then on, i’d often notice Gloria as i was entering or leaving the house, and she’d ask me questions in the hall.
Where could she mail a letter? Where could she catch a bus to Houston station? (she meant euston, but never did get that one sorted out). Where did i buy my kebab?
soon we were eating kebabs together at a nearby restaurant. Nobody paid her any attention. she didn’t dress up or look glamorous. it didn’t feel like i was hanging out with a film star at all.
We went on walks around london, saw plays at fringe theatres and, even though Gloria rarely drank alcohol, her favourite tipple being cold milk, she enjoyed spending evenings with me in the local pubs.
she loved me to tell her stories about my childhood in liverpool with my eight older brothers and sisters, about my father making toys out of old bits of wood to give us all at Christmas, about childhood summer holidays spent on the beach at New Brighton.
Her favourite was about the Pivvy, an old variety theatre where my mother was a cleaner. Aged seven, i would accompany her there and, while she picked up discarded theatre tickets and sweet wrappers between shows, i’d go on the stage as it was being brushed and imagine i was an actor in a play.
During our time together, Gloria made several visits to liverpool and met most of my siblings. she adored them, especially my brother Joe and his wife Jessie, with whom we holidayed in a Welsh mountain cottage. As for my mum, i never knew how much she understood our relationship, but she never asked questions and was clearly fond of Gloria.
in August 1980, when Gloria and i had been together for two years, we moved into her apartment on the 25th floor of a manhattan skyscraper. i loved decorating it and joining Gloria as she scoured junk shops for bargains, one of her favourite hobbies.
We were having a wonderful time until one day i realised that Gloria was increasingly unsettled. she spent time alone in her room, dismissed all my concerns and we’d argue, too. there was something not being said, a secret Gloria was keeping from me.
it was the sudden return of a cancer she had never told me about. oblivious, i concluded she was either having an affair or was just fed up with me. either way, it was time for me to leave.
Back home, i thought about Gloria a lot. i left messages for her everywhere but she didn’t get in touch, even after i had heard she had returned to england in the autumn of 1981 to appear in a play in lancaster.
i assumed that she didn’t want to bother with our friendship any more. But one night i got a call from someone at the theatre who told me Gloria had been rushed to hospital with stomach pains. she had stayed there only a day before discharging herself, against the advice of the doctors, and now she wanted me to go and see her.
since i didn’t have a car, Joe and Jessie drove me the hour or so up the motorway, and i realised there was something seriously wrong the moment i got there.
i discovered her lying in bed in a small hotel room, the curtains half closed. except for a tangle of blonde hair, i couldn’t actually see her. she was completely covered by a blanket.
‘Gloria, what’s wrong?’ i asked. ‘let me see your face.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said, but slowly pulled away the blanket. i couldn’t take my eyes off her.
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beside me in her suitcase were publicity photographs of her looking like the glamorous Hollywood star one would expect. But the woman before me was wearing old makeup, her face was thin and grey and her hair was knotted.
she had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and the doctors in lancaster wanted to operate immediately to remove a large tumour, but Gloria refused to go back to hospital.
insisting that she did not want any ‘fuss’, she was adamant that i should not get in touch with her family, nor seek any medical help for her — but there was one thing she did want me to do. ‘take me to liverpool,’ she said. And we drove there that tuesday night.
so began the sad six days in which Gloria lay dying upstairs in my parents’ house while i defied her wishes and contacted her eldest children, tim and Paulette, from her second and third marriages, and let them know they needed to come as soon as possible.
the sense of urgency grew when i further betrayed Gloria and persuaded a local doctor to visit her. He advised us that she would soon slip into a coma and didn’t have long to live — perhaps as little as 48 hours — so we took it in turns to sit with her.
my shifts fitted around my evening and matinee performances at the Playhouse. these at least helped distract me from my grief, and the strain was perhaps greater for my mother than anybody else. she and my dad had just reached their 50th wedding anniversary and were about to celebrate with a trip to Australia to see my brother, who had moved there 16 years previously.
they had never left england before, let alone been on an aeroplane, and they’d been dreaming about it for ages. But on the thursday, two days after Gloria’s arrival, my mother announced that her conscience would not allow her to go as long as there was a dying woman in her house.
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was coming to terms with her decision when we heard that Gloria’s children would not be able to make it to the UK until that weekend — at which point mum exploded.
‘ Hollywood’s got nothing on this!’ she cried, throwing her hands in the air. ‘i feel as though i’m living in a picture — and i’ve got the lousy part.’
With that, she said she was going to call for an ambulance and get Gloria to hospital there and then. in the uproar which ensued, as Joe blocked her path towards the phone and our dog ran round in circles barking with all her might, nobody realised that Gloria had appeared among us.
Wraith-like, in my mother’s long nightdress and with her hair hanging limp around her face, she looked bewilderedly about the room. she struggled to control her breath and speak.
‘look at me,’ she said. ‘i’m not sick. i’m not gonna die.’ she appealed to each of us in turn. ‘Why are you talking about me? i can hear you through the floor.’
‘oh Gloria, love,’ my mother said, with all her anger melted away. ‘let Peter help you up to the warm.’
Back upstairs, i realised that she had tried to put on her make-up. the browns and greens were smudged; the red was on a slant. it was too late to attempt a rescue. Nothing could have helped her.
‘tell me, Peter. tell me how i look,’ she said. i told her she was beautiful. so far, i’d done everything Gloria had asked me not to. i’d tried to persuade her to go to a hospital, i’d called a doctor and, unbeknown to her, i’d engineered the arrival of her children.
When they finally arrived on saturday, that was something i quickly regretted.
they decided to take Gloria back to New york to seek treatment from a doctor she trusted, and there was nothing we could do to persuade them that spending what could be her last few hours on a plane was not a good idea.
early on the monday morning, Gloria was dressed in the silk pyjamas and short, white fur coat i’d found in her suitcase, and we helped her downstairs into a taxi to the airport, from where the three of them would fly to london and onwards to New york.
We followed behind and waited at the departure gate.
When it was time for them to board, i kissed Gloria’s cheek and held her hand as she sat in a wheelchair. she winked at me and smiled.
that was the last time i saw her. she died later that day, a few hours after being admitted to st Vincent’s Hospital in New york.
As i had watched her being wheeled towards the aeroplane, i’d felt a tug on my arm from an airport worker in his 40s.
‘Was that Gloria Grahame? Was that the film star?’
FILM Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool by Peter Turner is published by Pan Books, priced £7.99. To order a copy for £6.39, visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until November 10, 2017.