A largely forgotten legend, compared as the British voice of Ethel Merman and all the tragedy of Judy Garland is appearing in London City on Saturday.
The Party starts at 12pm SL (8pm UK) with the show at 1pm SL
Location:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/London%20City/105/111/23
It is hard to believe that Dorothy Squires, now so forgotten was once the highest paid British singer.
Famous for her belting voice, her outrageous ball gowns and an unbridled and profane temper, Dorothy Squires was a sensation that swept the country in the 1950's and beyond.
In 1953 she married the then unknown actor Roger Moore who was 12 years her junior and used her substantial clout with the right people in Hollywood to get him into movies and television series.
As Roger Moore's career took off, hers began to slide. Throughout the 1960's she tried to keep her career in momentum, but she suffered from the emerging popularity of the sounds created by new and younger singers, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield and Sandy Shaw.
Squires and Moore separated in 1961, when Moore left her to move in with Luisa Mattioli. Squires refused to divorce him without a substantial settlement and Moore could not re-marry until an agreement was reached and the divorce was finalised 8 years later in 1969.
Now aged 55 she managed to chart one final time with her own cover of "My Way". New concerts followed at the Palladium, which Squires had hired herself at substantial cost, but her shows sold out in hours and she managed to cover her costs.
By 1971 Dorothy Squires career was almost at and end. She undertook the first of 30 court cases which would keep her as the focal point in newspapers for the next 15 years.
She successfully sued the News of The World for a story they printed about her and Moore entitled "When love turned sour".
Her new
career of suing people for libel began to turn bad when she dragged actor Kenneth Moore through the courts for accidentally referring to Mattioli as Roger Moore's
wife when Moore was still married to Squires at the time. She lost the case.
In 1973 she was charged with high kicking a taxi driver when he threw her out of his cab for being disorderly. The same year she was charged with trying to "bribe" a BBC producer to play her records, but the case was dropped.
In 1974 her house burned down and she managed to escape the inferno clutching her jewels and love letters from Roger Moore. She moved to a new house in Bray, which flooded three weeks later.
In 1982 she was banned from the high courts. The high court declared her to be a Vexatious Litigant due to the number of bizarre cases she had taken out against other wealthy people seeking compensation for things said about her. This move by the courts ended her ability from commencing any further legal action without the express permission of the court. She never got this permission and she was never able to sue again.
Now broke due to the enormous amount of costs incurred losing nearly all of her court cases, Squires accepted the home provided by an adoring fan in Wales. She retired there and lived out the rest of her life as a recluse. She died of lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 83.
She is probably the chief architect of all her bad luck, caused by an obsession of pursuing the fame she had once enjoyed, which had come and gone. Her refusal to realise that fame is fleeting was perhaps her undoing.
That said, she puts on a magnificent (if not a slightly bizarre camp comedy) show, so we hope you will join us for a rather tongue in cheek cabaret concert, celebrating the superstardom of Miss Dorothy Squires.
