Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool

Turner recalls the dying days of the late Gloria Grahame, a movie actress who had some success in the '50s and '60s, winning an Oscar for her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful. In England in 1981 to appear in a play, Grahame reached the terminal stage of stomach cancer and called on Turner, her ex-lover, for support. He took her to his parents' home in Liverpool, where her condition continued to deteriorate; along with being a food faddist, she was so distrusting of doctors that she would not enter a hospital. Eventually Turner contacted two of her children, who went to England and flew her to New York, wher she died. As a picture of a caring lower-middle-class British family, willing to make great sacrifices to help a stranger, the story is heartwarming, but there is little else to recommend it. (October 5)