Dorothy Squires (1915 - 1998)

As a child I was brought up in the suburbs of London. For the best part of my teenage years we lived in Bexley, Kent, a mere 14 miles from the centre of the metropolis. In those days (god, I sound like my grandmother!) the village teetered on the edge of the Green Belt and just a few hundred yards away were rolling heathland, fields and very posh houses.
In one of those posh houses lived the woman know to the locals as 'The Wicked Witch of the West'. Ms Dorothy Squires, star of stage and screen. A belter of a singer in the Ethel Merman mould but not someone you wanted to live next to, nor even in the same village.
The tales of her abuse of local tradesmen was legendary; her abuse of the local constabulary regularly landed her on the wrong side of the law. Then, in the early seventies, the house burnt down and she saved only her jewels and a box of love letters from Roger Moore, her ex-husband. And there in her hands were the two things that mattered most to her in the world. Her one enduring love, Roger Moore, and her stage accoutrements.
For the next 20 years she railed against the one and wore out the other. It was only in 1997 that she and Moore were finally reconciled and it was the film star who paid all her hospital bills of late. She gave up the fight on Tuesday 14th April 1998 when cancer finally managed to sink the indomitable Dorothy Squires at the ripe old age of 83. If the gods had been kinder she would have died in her prime and been a legend. As it was she fought her way into her dotage and long outlived her reputation in most people's eyes.
On Saturday 17th March 1990 I travelled down from London to Brighton to see 'An Evening With Dorothy Squires' at The Dome. The legend I saw onstage that night lived up to the caricature portrayed by a hundred drag queens of the seventies and eighties. A tiny figure swathed in organza clutching a flower belting out old numbers that filled every corner of the theatre. Never mind that she forgot most of the words except the chorus; never mind that she swayed drunkenly about the stage and never mind that her language would have made a docker blush. Her star quality oozed across the footlights. Like Judy and Marilyn before her it was her very fallibility that endeared her to her legions of loyal fans across the years. In this, her last ever performance (although we didn't know it), she, as ever, gave her all. Well, all that there was left to give.
Dot, as she was affectionately known to her fans, was born Edna May Squires on March 25th 1915 in a caravan in a field in South Wales. And it was to South Wales that the worn out star finally returned to in 1995, wondering if she could, just one more time, rise from the ashes. But it was not to be. This time she was down, never to rise again.
Dorothy's rise to prominence began, to all intents and purposes, when she left Wales at the age of 15 for London and the fabled gold-paved streets. She trained as a nurse but always wanted to sing. Her chance came when she was spotted performing in cabaret by band leader and composer Billy Reid. Over the next 11 years Reid groomed and directed his protege to stardom on radio and records as well as in panto. However, Reid became ever more possessive and eventually Dorothy decided it was time to move on. When they divided up the spoils of their relationship (they never married. He was already wed) he got the Astoria Theatre, Llanelli and she got the house in Bexley. That year saw her at the pinnacle of her career. Much in demand on both sides of the Atlantic, she often had acts like Morecombe & Wise as her support act.
The summer of 1952 saw Dorothy throwing yet another of her fabled parties and the arrival of her future downfall. Roger Moore.
Moore, at that time still a struggling actor and part-time model (most famously for knitting patterns) was married but that didn't stop them seeing each other and, soon afterwards, moving in together. Moore's wife divorced him and he and Dorothy married in 1953 in Jersey City.
Coincidentally soon after, Roger Moore's acting career started to take off and he landed the lead in Ivanhoe (1958), a TV series on the embryonic commercial network ITV. His star was in the ascendant while Dorothy's was beginning to fade. It was at this time that they decided that having children would be a good idea. Both wanted them but, after several miscarriages, it seemed that something was wrong. Of course, it had to be a problem with Roger. At Dorothy's urging Moore went to see a specialist in America. Returning with a prescription for 'baby pills' they set to again, but to no avail. She still couldn't carry to full term.
By 1961 Dorothy's career was on the ascendant again and she re-entered the charts with her anthem, penned by her, 'Say It With Flowers'. Cresting the wave of popularity she looked down into the trough only to hear Roger Moore saying that he was leaving her for an Italian actress called Luisa. Such was Dorothy's ire that she started on what was to become a lifetime obsession with litigation. Her first foray into the legal minefield which is the British legal system was with a suit against Roger Moore for 'restitution of conjugal rights', an ancient and archaic statute which is still enshrined in the law. Surprisingly, she won and the judge ordered Moore to return to the marital bed within 28 days. He, understandably, refused. Eventually, in 1968, Dottie finally admitted that her marriage was over and petitioned for divorce on the grounds of desertion. However, a year later the News of the World (and why am I not surprised at this) published a totally ficticious 'account' of Dorothy's view of the marriage. She sued and got £16,000. With two wins to her name Squires thought she was legally invincible and spent the next two decades suing anyone and everyone. Usually unsuccessfully. Her issuing of writs finally became so prolific that the then Attorney General barred her from launching any further legal actions without express permission from the High Court.
In 1970, convinced that all and sundry had written her off, she invested the only thing she had left, her talent, in a bravado gesture. She hired the London Palladium for the night at a cost of £5,000 and was not surprised when it sold out within 4 hours. She was back on top and she went on to storm round all the other big venues of the world with sellout nights at the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall amongst others. All may have looked bright and sparkly on the surface but, beneath the glamour and the glitz her aching heart was gnawing away as she became more and more dependant on alcohol. In 1986 she was declared bankrupt (something she refused to admit) and in 1988 she lost her last possession, her house in Bray. This was the final straw. Despite being discharged from bankruptcy in 1989 and that final concert in 1990 Dorothy Squires was a broken woman.
For the final 8 years of her life she scraped by on the charity of friends and devoted fans until she finally gave up the fight in a hospital in South Wales. The woman was a monster in real life but, somehow she never sold her fans and devotees short, so they forgave her.

 First published in QX Magazine
© Paul Towers 14/4/1998