A new film, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, tells the story of fading Hollywood star Gloria Grahame's affair with a young Liverpool actor, Peter Turner. The film, starring Jamie Bell and Annette Bening, focuses on her final days, but omits the scandalous earlier life of the Oscar-winning actress, including her seduction of her teenage stepson.
Gloria Grahame, who died of cancer in 1981 aged 57, was known for her on-screen chemistry with stars like Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart. Off-screen, she had a tumultuous personal life, with four husbands and numerous affairs. She was dubbed 'The Girl Who Can't Say No' and 'sexually insatiable' by the Hollywood press.
Her most notorious affair was with her teenage stepson, which caused a major scandal. She also reportedly scrawled the names of ex-lovers on bedsheets to anger one of her husbands. Despite this, her relationship with Peter Turner, who was nearly half her age, was described as the happiest of her life.
In her final days, Grahame flew to Liverpool to be with Turner, convinced he could outsmart the doctors who had told her she was dying. She eventually returned to the US to die with her family in New York.
