Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

by Peter Turner

  When the music had finished and the dancing had stopped, exhausted, I realized I ought to go.

  ‘I’ll have to leave now,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way to work.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll catch you later.’ She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and threw her hair back, then to one side.

  ‘That’s probable,’ I said. ‘I live at the top of the house.’

  It was spring. A very hot day in May. The day before had been cloudy and cold, and the sunshine was unexpected. Walking along Regent’s Park Road I could see that the local shopkeepers had been affected by the change in the weather. The greengrocer had pulled down his awning so that his produce was protected from the sun, while the ironmonger had folded his up and was busy cleaning the window. Two tables with cloths on sat on the pavement outside the French restaurant at the corner of the street.

  ‘This is great,’ I thought as I climbed up the steep path that goes over Primrose Hill. ‘Maybe the summer has come.’

  I didn’t want to make a noise and disturb Gloria when I got home late that night, so I tiptoed past her door on the way to my room. Just as I passed the point on the stairs where they squeak, and then twist round on up to the next floor, I noticed that the door to her rooms was now slightly ajar.

  ‘Is that you upstairs?’ she called from behind the door.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. It’s Peter.’

  ‘Oh Peter,’ she said in that devastating voice. ‘Peter. So that’s who you are. Hmm, I was gonna yell. You might have been a cat burglar or something. This house gives me the creeps.’

  ‘Well, it’s only me,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s all right. I think you’ll be safe.’

  ‘Oh,’ she miaowed, sounding disappointed. ‘I just love to be safe.’

  Then she closed the door, so I went on up to my room.

  A few days later on my way out of the house I’d just passed the squeak on the stairs when I heard the most terrible scream. It was Gloria. I rushed to her room, knocked very loud but there was no answer, so I turned the handle and pushed open the door. Before I could speak she flung herself at it from the other side. It slammed shut and I was pushed against the banister by the impact.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ she hollered. ‘You can’t come in here, whoever you are. I’m dyeing my eyelashes.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I heard you scream. I thought you’d had an accident.’

  ‘I sure have,’ she answered. ‘I’ve spilt the damn stuff. It’s gone all over my shirt.’

  I was about to leave her to it when her door opened slightly and she spoke to me from behind.

  ‘Hey, Peter,’ she whispered. ‘You couldn’t help me out, could you? I have to get to a rehearsal but now I don’t have a shirt. My other one’s in the laundry.’

  I found her one of my own and left it on the handle of her door.

  That night when I returned there was a note waiting for me at the bottom of my bed.

  Why don’t U come down? Let’s have a drink.

  Gloria.

  So I went.

  ‘Scotch?’

  ‘Yes, okay. Scotch.’

  She waltzed over to the cabinet and poured me a huge drink.

  Her rooms were bigger than I’d thought they would be. A bathroom and kitchen leading off the sitting room were added extensions to the house. Everything was open plan, with the dining room in the middle of the space, and her bedroom in a recess at the front. The furniture, mostly Habitat standards mixed with a few antiques, was tastefully distributed around the rooms. Had she not taken the bulbs out of the lamps and replaced them all with pink ones, the lighting would have been just right.

  ‘I’m really sorry about this morning. Did I give you a start? I’m sure not gonna play about with that eye-dye stuff any more. I’ll have to find a beauty room.’

  Her head was wrapped up in a scarf, tied in a knot at the side, the ends of which, like ribbons, hung down over her shoulder. She’d taken off the dark glasses and for the first time I could see her grey-green eyes. Her make-up was immaculate.

  ‘Hey, thanks a lot for the shirt,’ she said, tucking it in at the waist. ‘I love to wear men’s clothes.’

  It did look very good on her, I thought, but I knew I’d never get it back.

  ‘Here. Try that.’ She handed me the drink and sat down next to me on the couch. Her movie-tone smile failed to put me at my ease. ‘I hear you’re an actor,’ she inquired, and waited for a response.

  ‘That’s right,’ I replied and swallowed half my drink.

  ‘Do you like political plays?’

  ‘It depends on what they are.’

  ‘Well, you’re gonna love Julius Caesar. It’s very political. “Lend me your ears”,’ she proclaimed. ‘Oooh, that William Shakespeare. My mother’s read me every word.’

  ‘I once played Romeo,’ I told her, thinking she’d find that interesting.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she enthused and gave me a smouldering look. ‘Hey, can I ask you something? Are you Welsh?’

  Just the way she phrased her words and the incredulous look on her face made me laugh out loud.

  ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘Have I said something dumb?’

  ‘I come from the north. I come from Liverpool.’

  ‘That’s really something. I’d really like to go there.’

  ‘Well maybe you will.’

  ‘I don’t expect so,’ she sighed. ‘I’m just here long enough to do my play – I’m Sadie Thompson in Rain. Then I’m back to the States.’

  ‘What made you decide to do a play in England?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I was invited to. Anyway, it’s like coming back to my roots. My father was English and my mother came from Scotland. She was an actress here before she went to America, so I guess it’s always been an ambition of mine to work in the English theatre. I was brought up on stories about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m surprised you haven’t done it before.’

  ‘I would have loved to, Peter, but I’ve never had the chance before. I’m not known for working in the theatre, so I suppose people forget to ask. It’s the same in America. Occasionally I get to do summer stock but nothing that I really want to do. Last year I played Gillian in Bell, Book and Candle at the Spring Lake Summer Theater. Huh! Forget it. I’d like to start my career again,’ she declared, ‘and only work in the theatre. I don’t think I’ve done enough. Just films.’

  ‘And musicals,’ I said, thinking of her singing ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do a show, Peter. Oh no,’ she cried and put her hand up to hide her face. ‘I can’t sing. I couldn’t carry a song, not even in a bucket. When I did Oklahoma! we had to go through my numbers note by every little note. I warned Dick Rodgers about giving me the part but he just said he was after the twinkle in my eye. Huh, I guess that’s all he got.’ She bit on her lower lip and started to giggle.

  For someone who had been in over thirty Hollywood films alongside great actors like Joan Crawford and Humphrey Bogart, and worked with brilliant directors like Fritz Lang and Vincent Minnelli, Gloria gave me the impression that she had no real sense of achievement.

  ‘It’s not the work that I’ve done that matters so much,’ she said. ‘It’s the work that I want to do that’s really important to me. When I get back to New York I wanna work as much as I can in the theatre. I’m gonna go to lots of auditions.’

  Her girlish charm and enthusiasm I found irresistible and, within an hour or so, we had become friends. We talked a lot about the things we’d done and she told me lots about working in Hollywood. Most of all she made me laugh.

  ‘Hey, Peter,’ she said when I stood up to go. ‘Did you go to RADA?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, my mother did! Isn’t that something? She taught me everything I know. You must have heard me doing my voice exercises in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, I hear you quite a lot.’

  I wished her goodnight and
went up to my room. As I reached the top of the stairs I could hear her down below.

  ‘Loo Poo Boo Moo.’

  ‘Lah Pah Bah Mah.’

  Rain opened and was moderately successful, although some people thought that Gloria was miscast in the role of Sadie Thompson. She’d been nervous and unsure throughout the rehearsal period, mainly because of her lack of experience of performing in the theatre, and this was apparent on the first night. However, she gained strength through performance and the production was enthusiastically received by each audience.

  Although she intended her British debut to be a quiet affair, it was obvious that most of the audience came to the little theatre at Watford, outside London, just to see her. She was inundated with fan mail and her telephone rang constantly. Reporters wanted interviews and photographers started turning up at the house. The interest shown by the press was surprising. There was a double page spread of photographs of her in one of the Sunday magazines, and a national newspaper ran an article calling her a ‘legendary floozie’. Invitations to cocktail parties, film premieres and first nights at West End theatres arrived in her post. It was as if she had been rediscovered and was now a celebrity around town. When I escorted her to a party after the opening of a film, she was mobbed by photographers flashing cameras as soon as she stepped out of the taxi.

  More important to her than being feted by the glitterati and press, she was immediately asked to appear in A Tribute to Lili Lamont at the New End Theatre in London, and was offered a part in a television play with Jim Dale and another with Joseph Cotton. The attention she was getting in England obviously reverberated across the Atlantic: she was approached about appearing in a well-known soap opera and was offered an exciting cameo role in a film called Head Over Heels.

  Gloria was amused by the roles being offered to her, which ranged from glamorous mistresses to fairy-tale wicked witches and quirky, sexy mothers-in-law.

  Gloria and I had now known each other for about three months. We started spending more and more time together, either having meals in her rooms or taking late night walks through London. Mostly we’d end up by the Thames and would walk along the Embankment. She loved to hear me talk about Liverpool. She was fascinated by the place and determined to visit it as soon as she could. Liverpool, to Gloria, held the same fascination as Hollywood did for me. While I’d be wanting her to tell me stories about the movies, she’d be wanting me to tell her stories about my family;

  ‘When did your sister Bella marry Jimmy?’

  ‘Bella married Arthur. It was Mary who married Jimmy.’

  ‘I thought Maisie got him.’

  ‘She did, but that was a different Jimmy.’

  ‘Tell me again how John met Rose?’

  ‘He was staying the weekend with Joe and Jessie and she was the girl next door.’

  ‘. . . and they’ve been married ever since?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve got six kids.’

  ‘They must all be so in love. Liverpool sounds heaven.’

  When I told her that my sister Eileen was married to an Arab and now lived in Baghdad, she nearly fainted on the spot.

  ‘Oh, that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.’

  I wasn’t sure if Eileen would quite agree.

  ‘. . . and tell me more about you. I wanna hear all about Betty.’

  ‘I was only five or six,’ I pleaded. ‘Betty was just a kid from across the street.’

  ‘Well why did you call her Boo Boo?’

  The questions went on and on. Gloria was obsessed. She loved me to tell her stories; about my mother in the war, about my father making toys out of old bits of wood to give to us all at Christmas. She could make me recount to her adventures of childhood summer holidays spent on the beach at New Brighton, of the fun whole families had following Bessie Braddock around the streets of Toxteth in the late fifties, carrying ‘Vote Labour’ placards. Gloria loathed right wing politics and politicians.

  ‘I can’t stand the sight of Ronnie Reagan,’ she said. ‘I’d like to stick my Oscar up his arse!’

  One day she received an invitation to visit a London film school to sit through a screening of one of her films.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me, Peter?’ she asked. ‘It’s Human Desire.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen it before.’

  At the end of the screening she was asked to answer questions for the students. I could see that she was uneasy. An eager-looking student stood up to pose his question. As an actress who had worked with directors like Fritz Lang, Dmytryk, Minnelli And De Mille, he asked, in her considered opinion, what was the difference between a good director and a bad director? Gloria’s face turned white.

  ‘Well,’ she said after a long silence and a lot of dubious looks. ‘I guess a good director’s a good director and a bad director’s a bad one.’

  She laughed along with everyone else, and the rest of the session was a success.

  Walking home later that afternoon, Gloria became unusually quiet.

  ‘Hey, Peter. Can I ask you something?’ she said, as we were halfway along Prince Albert Road. ‘How do I join the Royal Shakespeare Company? I wanna play Juliet.’

  ‘Don’t be soft,’ I said. ‘You’d be better off playing the nurse.’

  I thought I knew her well enough to make a silly joke, but it backfired. Gloria was furious.

  ‘Dammit!’ she shouted. ‘How do I join the Royal Shakespeare Company? I wanna see if they think I can play those parts.’

  ‘Well maybe you could join the RSC,’ I said, trying to placate her. ‘It’s a good idea, but I don’t think that you’d be quite right to play Juliet. That’s all I mean.’

  We’d just reached the entrance to the zoo when she turned on me.

  ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it, Peter? Now I know why you don’t like me. You just think that I’m too old. That’s why you don’t want to get real close. You think that I’m just an old lady. Well you’re wrong. I’m gonna go to that theatre right now and I’m gonna see one of their shows. I have to take a look at the competition!’

  Gloria stormed off and hailed a taxi.

  Suddenly it dawned upon me why she was so mad. Gloria didn’t really think that she could actually play Juliet. It was just her crazy way of trying to find out if I was sexually attracted to her.

  Of course I was. The attraction was undeniable. Since the day she’d borrowed my shirt there had been many occasions when our friendship could have become closer, but I was wary of becoming involved. Gloria was a Hollywood star, she’d been married four times, and she was more than twenty years older than me. I went back home to think.

  It was late. I was sitting reading when I heard footsteps running up to my room.

  ‘Guess where I’ve been, Peter?’ Gloria burst through the door with a triumphant look all over her face.

  ‘The Royal Shakespeare Company,’ I confidently replied.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I sat next to some dame in the theatre who told me that she’d played Juliet at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She’d played lots of parts there. What’s more, she’s a hell of a lot older than me.’

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Peggy Ashcroft,’ she announced.

  We collapsed in a heap of laughter on my bed.

  She spent the night in my room. From then on we were inseparable.

  ‘You’re wanted on the phone! It’s your cousin. It’s Eileen Connolly.’

  I woke up instantly. One eye opened but the other was stuck.

  Eileen had a peculiar knack of ‘being there’ at very crucial times. It was she who, when I was thirteen years old, taught me how to smoke. Then six months later she told me about sex. She’d been my bringer of knowledge, my confidante and confessor. Her sudden appearances usually heralded a major change in my life.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s on the phone,’ Jessie replied.

  ‘No. Where is she? Tell her I’ll call her back.�
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  ‘You can’t. She says she wants you now.’

  I pulled on a pair of jeans, then stumbled along the landing. As I looked down the staircase to Gloria’s room I could see that the door was firmly shut, so I went into the sitting room and picked up the receiver.

  ‘What are you doing in bed at this hour? It’s nearly twelve o’clock.’

  ‘I didn’t realize. How are you?’

  ‘Great. But listen, how are you? Jessie’s just told me Gloria isn’t well and that she’s there with you in the house. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘You know, it’s really strange, Pete, but I’ve been thinking about her all week. Honest. I have. Now isn’t that weird?’

  ‘Yes, that’s strange.’

  ‘I’ve even had those photographs developed. Do you remember? The ones we took in New York. Oh, there’s a lovely one of you and Gloria standing by the window in her flat, and there’s a smashing one of me holding her Oscar. Everyone says I look like Jane Fonda, but me mother thinks I look more like Henry. All the girls at work want to have it blown up to stick behind the bar. Only for a laugh. Don’t you think that’s funny?’

  ‘Eileen, I’m not properly awake. Can I call you back? I haven’t yet been in to see Gloria.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Pete. You can’t go in to see Gloria because the doctor’s there with her. He’s giving her an examination. Him and your mother are attending to her right now. Well, that’s what Jessie just told me. What’s the matter with her? Is it something serious?’

  ‘I’ll have to phone you back. I’ll have to see what’s happening.’

  ‘You’ll have to calm down. What you need is a break. You need to get out of that house for a while. Listen, I’m working tonight at the Belgrave Club. Why don’t you get yourself down there after your play and we’ll be able to have a drink and a talk? That’s what you need.’