Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (18 page)

When the play
Rain
finished at Watford, Gloria stayed on in London after being offered the role of Lily in the play
A Tribute to Lily Lamont
, which was to be presented at The New
End Theatre in Hampstead. She played parts on British television in the autumn of that year and, taking her by surprise, there was renewed film interest in her from both sides of the Atlantic.
Gloria was interviewed on radio and there were articles about her in the London press. The British film and theatre world responded and, although Gloria preferred to keep herself out of any
limelight, there were invitations for her to give talks at film schools, and to go to film festivals as well as being invited to other special events. Her career was in new bloom. Our personal and
private relationship gave confidence to us both. There seemed to be an exciting future ahead.

Over the following two years there were weekends together in Brighton, Glasgow, and Wales. We holidayed on a Greek island where we rented a room from a local who met tourists at the port.
Between gaps in recording each season of my television series, and Gloria’s shooting schedules for the films
Chilly Scenes in Winter
and
Melvin and Howard
, which took her back
to the United States, I visited her at the caravan she owned near a beach in Los Angeles, and I also stayed with her several times at her rented apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

Thinking back now on the course of our relationship I can see clearly when, but not knowing at the time why, it started to change.

It was 1980. It was summer. The telephone woke me at five a.m. It was Gloria calling me from America. The conversation, as usual, was chatty and close and by the end of it
we’d worked out that I would travel to see her. Excited by the spur of the moment arrangement, I bought a cheap standby ticket and flew out of London the following day. A scary lightning
storm, flashing across a black sky, thundered the sides of my plane as it descended over New York.

It wasn’t a surprise to me that Gloria was feeling so tired. From the beginning of the year she’d been determined to do as much work in the theatre as she possibly could and
stubbornly pursued roles she’d always wanted to play. Learning and preparing some hefty parts such as Amanda in
Private Lives
and, achieving one of her ambitions, the role of Lady
Macbeth; she’d travelled to little-known theatres in faraway places to act in small-scale productions which played for little more than a week. In between plays she’d flown to London
and back again twice and she’d been on location in Georgia to film
Mr Griffin and Me
. And it was only the month of July!

The city was humid and hot. Gloria was restless and contrary. She didn’t want to stay in and she didn’t want to go out. It was only when she was contacted by the Inland Revenue
Service to question her over expenses for theatre tickets she’d sent them without providing receipts that she found a renewed energy. Her contrariness turned into crusade.

Over the following days, every evening after dark, I walked with her through the theatre district to pick discarded ticket stubs up from the gutter, as well as any other receipt she thought
might satisfy the IRS. How was I to know, twenty-two years earlier, aged seven, and following after my mother picking theatre tickets up from the floor at the theatre in Liverpool, that one day I
would be doing exactly the same thing with a film star on the streets of New York?

Hot July turned into hotter August. Gloria became increasingly unsettled. She didn’t like her hair or she didn’t like her clothes. There were telephone calls. She spent time alone in
her room. She dismissed all my concerns. She’d be snappy or short. We’d argue. I took myself walking through the city. There was something not being said. Maybe the relationship was
over. There was a secret Gloria was keeping from me. I knew it was time to go home.

I didn’t know then that the secret was the sudden return of a cancer she’d never told me about and which she would die from the following year.

My
Spearhead
job took me away filming to Hong Kong at the end of that year and I didn’t see Gloria again until those last days in Liverpool. There was a letter she’d sent in
which a particular line stood out:

Both Sartre and Camus wrote, that in this life, when we die, it’s only love that is important.

Maybe the fact that my relationship with Gloria was not considered to be legitimate while she was alive was the reason it was hardly acknowledged after she had died. It was only many years
later, when I returned to California, that I went with friends to Oakwood Cemetery and I stood at Gloria’s grave.

I disengaged from my acting career at about the same time that it disengaged from me. It didn’t matter. I went to work in a junk shop at the far end of the Portobello
Road. One day a 1950s desk I liked the look of was brought in to be put up for sale, so I bought it for myself. Months later I found an old Hermes typewriter to put on it. Waking up too early one
morning, I looked at the typewriter, sat at the desk, and started to write my book.

Not having written anything previously, I didn’t have high expectations for the book and thought of it as just my very own story, but when Michael Billington, an actor friend from my
Spearhead
days, read it, he encouraged me to think of it as something more. I sent it to several literary agents but one by one they sent the manuscript back. In a last-ditch attempt, not
realizing I’d kept the best till the last, I sent it to Deborah Rogers. Months later, Deborah telephoned to say that she liked it and that she’d given it to Carmen Callil, the managing
director of the publishers Chatto and Windus.
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
was published eleven months later, in 1986.

When the book was published it gathered interest from the film world and, after many challenges and a walk down a very long road, it now looks as if a film is to be made by producers Barbara
Broccoli and Colin Vaines for Eon Productions, with a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh and with Paul McGuigan to direct.

I’m indebted to Mathew Turner (no relation) at Rogers, Coleridge and White for taking
Film Stars
up again after all these years, and I’m especially grateful to Georgina Morley
at Pan Macmillan for taking a chance on me by re-publishing it.

P
ETER
T
URNER
is a Liverpool-born actor, writer and director. He joined the National Youth Theatre aged sixteen, working extensively
in theatre, film and television. Known for his parts in
The Krays
,
The Comeback
and
Spearhead
, he was selected for the Carlton’s Screenwriters’ Course in 1993.

First published 1986 by Chatto and Windus

Published in 1988 by Penguin Books

This electronic edition published 2016 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-5098-1822-8

Copyright © Peter Turner 1986
‘Since Then’ © Peter Turner 2016

Cover Image © Moviepix / Getty Images

The right of Peter Turner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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