Doreen France MBE, Huddersfield’s best-known amateur operatic star, was a “force of nature”, “like a second mum” and “an absolutely brilliant performer”.
These are among the many tributes paid to the former dance teacher and charity fund-raiser, who died at home in Crosland Moor on Friday, November 6.
Doreen had a remarkable talent and appeared over the years with numerous amateur companies across West Yorkshire in a stage career that spanned 70 years, but she will also be remembered for her tireless charity fund-raising and the dancing school that she founded and ran for 45 years.
In the New Years Honours 2001/2 she was awarded an MBE for services to the community and the performing arts. At the time she received the award she said she was accepting it on behalf of all those who had helped stage her many charity concerts.
One of her oldest friends, fellow amateur performer Peter Armitage, says Doreen’s own talents were such that she was always in demand. He explained: “Society after society were asking her to play roles with them. She was an absolutely brilliant performer, a real all-rounder. And then she started doing a bit of choreography because she was a superb dancer, and from doing that she was asked to produce shows. She took to it like a duck to water.”
For quarter of a century Doreen was the choreographer for Peter’s annual Avalanche Dodgers’ all-male pantomime in Marsden. “She could control 30 lads and teach them to dance like nobody else,” said Peter, who worked with Doreen at various theatres throughout the region for 45 years. “She was very ladylike but had a great sense of fun,” he added, “she used to sing with a cabaret group I had called The Victorians and once dressed up as a monkey to sing a song from Cabaret. We had a lot of laughs over the years.”
Although Doreen, whose husband of 47-years, Bill Richardson, died in 1998, had no children of her own she was surrounded by many close friends from the theatre world and a network of past pupils who she referred to as ‘my girls’. Former professional dancer Sue Gledhill was one of those who cared for Doreen in the later years of her life. Sue was just four years old when she first met Doreen in 1988 and the pair struck up a lasting bond. “She has been my dancing teacher, a friend and like a second mum to me,” she said. “She refers to me as the daughter she never had.”
Such was their close friendship that when Sue was working as an air stewardess she once made a 6,000-mile round trip to see Doreen perform on the stage at Leeds Grand.
They often travelled together, an experience that revealed just how well-known Doreen had become. Sue explained: “Everywhere you went people knew her. We have been on cruises together and we’ve met people at the airport, in the hotel and on the ship who knew her.”
The Examiner’s retired arts editor Val Javin also had a long association with Doreen, often reviewing shows that featured the intrepid performer. She describes Doreen as “a force of nature”.
“She was a major figure in both amateur operatics and charity work,” said Val. “She leaves a huge legacy of shows that she appeared in, directed and choreographed and a whole army of other people that she brought into the world of amateur operatics and theatre. There are generations of performers throughout the region who will find this a very difficult time. She will be very much missed.”
Doreen will also be remembered by many for her sense of fun, her impeccable dress sense and the fact that she never revealed her age. Even as her health failed and she succumbed to dementia, Doreen remained elegant and immaculately turned out. She was also determined to stay in the home she had shared with Bill for many years until the end - and did so with the aid of carers and the devotion of her friends. “She was where she wanted to be - with her dignity,” said Peter.
Doreen was always a real trouper, in both senses of the word. A lifetime treading the boards, coupled with osteoarthritis in her hips and knees, caused her much pain over the years and resulted in four hip replacement operations. But she always believed that the show must go on and only gave up performing in 2004 and choreographing shows back in 2013. It was the end of an era for a woman who had started dancing at the age of four, founded her own dancing school at the age of 16, and went on to become an operatic superstar. Her legacy includes a dancing school, that continues to foster young talent, and the memories of the many whose lives she touched.
* Doreen’s funeral is at Marsden Parish Church on Friday (November 20) at 11am, followed by cremation at Huddersfield at 1.15pm.
