Book details
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
A True Love Story
Author: Peter Turner
About This Book
Book Details
Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, and Vanessa Redgrave
The Golden Age of Hollywood, a young British actor, a love affair, and a tragedy, Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool is Peter Turner's touching memoir of the last days of Hollywood icon Gloria Grahame, the Oscar-winner best known for her portrayal of irresistible femme fatales in films such as The Big Heat,Oklahoma and The Bad and the Beautiful.
On September 29, 1981, Peter Turner received a phone call that would change his life. His former lover, Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, had collapsed in a Lancaster hotel and was refusing medical attention. He took her into his chaotic and often eccentric family’s home in Liverpool to see her through her last days. Though their affair had ended years before, it was to him that she turned in her final hour of need.
Taking place over the course of three weeks in Turner’s larger-than-life working-class family home,Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is an affectionate, moving, and wryly humorous memoir of friendship, love, and stardom.
Imprint Publisher
Picador
ISBN
9781250136855
Reading Guide
In The News
"Poignant...the book's strength is found in its sketches of surprising personal connections." --The New Yorker
"Amusing and poignant...[An] affecting chronicle, a flashback-filled text that evokes by turns the feel of a documentary film, a subtle poem, a melancholy novella and a farcical play." --The Wall Street Journal
“Funny, touching, odd, and thank goodness, uncategorizable.”—The Guardian (London)
“Here is a memoir concerned with a painful death that frequently has you laughing out loud.”—The Observer (London)
“Rarely has the mortality of the gods been so poignantly brought home.”—The Literary Review
“An extraordinary book.”—Roger Ebert
“A well-paced gathering of eccentrics that mirrors Kaufman and Hart and stirs the heartstrings.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A gifted writer.”—The Sunday Times