Moving proof of what fame is really worth

HOW much are fame and glamour, now the golden currency of the modern world, really worth? One answer is to be found in the movie Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell. I was astonished by this account, based on the true story of the last weeks of the life of the once-famous Gloria Grahame. Millions have seen her play the beguiling floozy, Violet Bick, rescued from a sordid future in It’s A Wonderful Life.

They couldn’t imagine the fairly grim slow-motion shipwreck which followed – broken marriages, shrinking fame, sickness and scandal – or guess that the siren who once shared the screen with Humphrey Bogart was a halfEnglish girl who really longed to play Shakespeare. The end, in a very modest Liverpool terrace house, is a kind of redemption, and rather moving, but it wasn’t a wonderful life.