Dora Bryan

Stage

Bryan made her stage debut as a child in a pantomime in Manchester, and encouraged by her mother, joined the Oldham Coliseum while still a teenager. After spending six years honing her craft there, she moved to London to develop her stage career, becoming a regular performer in the West End. Cast in a production of Noël Coward's Private Lives, the actress was encouraged to adopt a stage name by Coward himself. She opted for Dora Bryant, which she often said was inspired by a box of Bryant and May matches that were lying on the table, but a typographical error left off the last letter on the theatre credits and she became Dora Bryan.^[5]

In 1955, Bryan made her debut in West End musical comedy with her performance as Lily Bell in a production of A.P. Herbert's The Water Gipsies. Singing the show's hit songs, "Why Did You Call Me Lily?", "You Never Know with Men", and "It Would Cramp My Style", such was her personal success that the billing outside the theatre was changed after the first night to "Dora Bryan in A.P. Herbert's The Water Gipsies.^[6][7]

Throughout her career, she continued to perform on the stage, often appearing in musicals such as Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1962) and Hello, Dolly! (1966–1968). She also headlined a number of stage revues such as The Dora Bryan Show (1966), "My Name Is Dora" (1967) and An Evening with Dora Bryan and Friends (1968). She made her Broadway debut as Mrs. Pearce in Pygmalion (1987), starring Peter O'Toole and Amanda Plummer. Other credits include her first Shakespearean role, Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1984), Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer (1985) and in Kander and Ebb's 70, Girls, 70 (1991) to great acclaim. She appeared with Trevor Peacock in the National Theatre's 1994 revival of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party.^[8]

Screen roles and other work

Instantly recognisable from her voice, which became a trademark of her performances, Bryan followed many of her theatre contemporaries into film acting, generally playing supporting roles. She often played women of easy virtue—for example in The Fallen Idol (1948), one of her early films, and Ealing's The Blue Lamp (1950). She appeared in similarly stereotypical female roles in other films, for example Gift Horse (1952), The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), The Green Man (1956) and Carry On Sergeant (1958).

Bryan appeared in radio comedy series including Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh. British Pathe filmed Bryan in 1957 in 'Home on Wheels', featuring her and friends in her personal caravan. She appeared in the film A Taste of Honey (1961), which won four BAFTA awards, including Best Actress for Bryan and Best British Film. In 1963, she recorded the Christmas song "All I Want for Christmas Is a Beatle", which reached no. 20 on the UK charts. She played the Headmistress in The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), and she starred in According to Dora (1968–1969), her own television series for the BBC.

Bryan appeared in the UK-Argentine thriller Apartment Zero (1988). The film was directed by Martin Donovan and starred Hart Bochner and Colin Firth. Bryan plays the role of one of two eccentric characters (the other was played by Liz Smith) described by The Washington Post as two "tea-and-crumpet gargoyle-featured spinsters who snoop the corridors".^[9] It featured in the 1988 Sundance Film Festival. She appeared in two episodes of series one of the BBC sitcom On The Up in 1990 as Mrs Carpenter (the mother of main character Tony, played by Dennis Waterman). She was replaced by actress Pauline Letts for series two and three.

In 1998, Bryan made an appearance in the Victoria Wood sitcom dinnerladies. In 2000, she joined the cast of the long-running BBC comedy series Last of the Summer Wine as Auntie Ros, and in 2001 she was a guest star in Absolutely Fabulous as June Whitfield's on-screen friend Dolly (originally called Milly when she appeared in 1996).

A few years later in 2005 her role in Last of the Summer Wine came to an end. At about the same time, she stopped making films. Her last screen appearance was in the short film Gone to the Dogs (2006) with Antony Booth. In 2006, she intended to appear both in the comedy Rock-a-Hula Rest Home at a pub theatre in Brighton and in the comedy There's No Place Like a Home, but she had to withdraw because of her inability to memorise her lines.^{[citation needed]}