Annette Bening as Gloria Grahame
Friday, July 7, 2017 at 11:25AM by Murtada
We just got the news that Annette Bening will be presiding over the Venice Film festival jury. Now we get two new photos of her as Gloria Grahame in the anticipated biopic Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. And that's not all. The film has a UK release date of November 17. A US distribution and release date news must be imminent. Unfortunately Bening presiding over the Venice jury not only rules the film out of that festival, but also out of Telluride which takes place at the same time, and the first and more important week of buzz building at TIFF. Unless they unspool the film without its star which seems unlikely. And we'd like her to get that festival buzz that is important for awards later on.
Till then enjoy the Bening and Jamie Bell as Grahame and Peter Turner, an actor she befriended late in her life while appearing in a production of The Glass Menagerie in London. The film is based on Turner’s memoir about the time Grahame spent recuperating at his family home in Liverpool when diagnosed with cancer. Directed by Paul McGuigan (Victor Frankenstein), it also stars Julie Walters and Kenneth Cranham as Turner’s parents.
Will Bening follow Blanchett and win an Oscar for playing an Oscar winner?
Reader Comments (31)
I don't know how this will pan out.I am very hopeful for Bening but she's already an Oscar winner to me but also for Jamie Bell who has been underutilized for way too long in his career.
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Love Bening and it's high time that someone got around to Grahame's life, but frankly nothing about Bening the actress, anything she's ever done onscreen, nor how she's made to look in these (admittedly limited) photos strike me are reminiscent of Grahame at all. And frankly while it's silly to base a movie off a couple of photos, the images are setting off warning signs. Grahame was looking basically decrepit by the time the events in this film would have taken place (the bottom half of her face had basically been paralyzed for thirty years and she was a heavy drinker and smoker, and she was overweight) and nothing in the book this film is based off of involves her standing in doorways benevolently (or standing much at all, she's bedridden from almost the entirety of the book) or cheerfully allowing herself to be kissed on the cheek by candlelight. In fact she basically alternates between being a holy terror or totally dependent.
I'd like to read the book,Agreed Bening looks radiant doesn't she always but maybe this at the start of the film and she gets worse as time progresses.
I love Bening and would love to see her win an Oscar; however, when a director has directed 7 theatrical films and none have come close to any kind of Oscar recognition, it seems unlikely that the 8th is the charm.
Way more excited to see her in the seagull. She could be absolutely brilliant in that part.
Unless they are rewriting the book, there's no reason for Bening to look the way she does in these photos. Grahame was basically dying before she ever came Liverpool. The last twenty years of her life had been a decline.
She should have won for 20th Century Women. What a brilliant display of acting through reacting to others and herself. Probably her greatest work and that's saying something, when you consider The Grifters and American Beauty.
I must have read the book more attentively than some (and I enjoyed it) as I remember clearly the author's flashbacks to the happy times of their relationship, their meeting in London, their time in LA, etc. Plus they had met three or four years before she died. Also, from the pictures of her in later life available out there she was far from overweight and 'decrepit'. Let's be hopeful about this film instead of negative!
The inclusion of BAFTA-magnet Julie Walters bodes well...
Actually Annette Bening reminded me a lot of Gloria Grahame in the early part of her career, think Valmont, Postcards From The Edge, and The Grifters. I have confidence that she can evoke Grahame without doing a full on impression.
Isn't Vanessa Redgrave also supposed to be in this in some capacity? My memory of the book is hazy so I can't remember what role she would be playing.
I kind of wish someone would make a film about Grahame's Hollywood years, although I guess that could also go somewhat disastrously depending on who was cast. She led an exceptionally colorful as bizarre life, you almost wouldn't believe it if you didn't know it was true.
Finished the book about a month ago and I've also seen the last couple of films Grahame completed, including Melvin and Howard (made the same year the events in the book took place) in which she is unrecognizable and according to Demme on the DVD commentary track she looked nothing like he'd expected her to, could barely move her mouth and couldn't remember the literally five words of dialogue she had to say in the film. Both of her biographers, Robert J. Lentz and Vincent Curcio tell similar stories about her difficulties onstage in productions of Macbeth and of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe relating to both her weight and her inability literally to be understood. And even in the flashbacks within the source material, the writer clearly states she was almost always sick (she has just recovered from her first bout of cancer when they met) and rarely ever fully functional physically speaking. Regardless she sure as hell looked nothing like Bening does in these photos, flashbacks or otherwise.
I think that Annette Bening is perfect casting for this and I can't wait to see it. Who cares if she doesn't look enough like Gloria Grahame did in her later years for some? This is a movie, not a documentary.
Because the book is literally about the last year of Grahame's life when she was dying of an extraordinarily long and painful bout of cancer which she refused to be treated for (which is another element the book talks about) and which virtually debilitated her (when she finally returned to America, her family had to come accompany her on the trip back, that's how incapacitated she was).
Can't the film screen out of competition at Venice? Seems like a pretty obvious solution and probably not unprecedented.
Patrick, check out this picture of Gloria three months before she died:.http://filmnoirphotos.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/tracking-with-closeups-gloria-grahame.html
and listen to her radio interview on youtube.You may not change your mind but allow other people to disagree with your take on things.
Grahame as Martha ?! That sounds incredible!
It would be great is with these two films and her upcoming tv stint, Bening has the year Kidman is having. 2016 was a great year for best actress but it has been a very long while since I've been as bummed out by a snub to the extent that I was when Bening didn't get nominated for 20th century woman, in a career full of excellent work that has to be her greatest performance and imo her best film.
Hmmm... seems if you are gunning for Oscar you should at least look like the famous person you are playing?
When does this air on Lifetime?
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I think this is Grahame's last screen appearance, she doesn't look fat to me and she also looks a little like Benning.
I can't see this making any kind of impression. Looks like the kind of film your grandparents might see on a Sunday afternoon.
How is this being viewed as anything other than "My Week with Marilyn" part two is beyond me.
i'm losing my blob over the billy elliot and mrs wilkinson reunion!
Is Jamie Bell playing her son or grandson? Love Annette but she may join Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Pfeiffer and other worthy gals in the never win club. This would have to be the greatest film ever made.
In the book, Turner does talk a lot about Grahame putting on makeup and dressing up even though she was sick, but towards the end of the book, she was seriously ill. This is a picture of Bening and Bell filming on a yacht, in which Bening does look make-up free. Maybe this represents a point in which Grahame was ill:
http://feilongfan.tumblr.com/post/146618857775
Hayden,
My thoughts exactly - and then also there's no competition pressure, the film can walk away from Venice as a major contender without losing Best Actress to a film no-one will see dampening the enthusiasm.
I did not know that Annette had passed. My condolences to her family.
It does feel like we are the beginning of an "Overdue Oscar" storyline heating up for this year.
I have not read the book, for the record.
I just saw 20th Century Women for the first time today (thank you amazon prime!) and my oh my was Bening terrific. By far her career high.
Stone winning over her and Portman is such a joke.
Also on another note: I am now officially a fan of Elle Fanning. Maybe I just haven't been paying her proper attention but wowza. Wish she got more attention for that.
Every year that Annette Bening has a role then voices come out saying that this is the year that she will win the Oscar but at the end or not nominate her or another actress is more acclaimed. It has become a deja vu.
With all this I still think she should win the Oscar for Being Julia. That was her year.