When Dorothy was in hospital during her final illness, Roger Moore phoned and spoke to Emily, enquiring about her. “He asked me to keep him informed of Dorothy’s condition, and then said ‘Take her hand, squeeze it, and tell her that Roger is thinking of her’. When I went back to Dorothy’s bedside and told her that he had just called, and passed on Roger’s message, she looked at me in a certain way … it was sort of a look of recognition and mutual understanding, that both she and I knew what that phone call meant to her. And then the spell was broken because the next second she was telling everybody, ‘That f****ing bastard has just been on the phone’!”
When Dorothy died on 14th April 1998 Emily phoned Roger at his home in Monte Carlo to tell him the news. “He was genuinely sorry and offered his commiserations. Over the years the press made a great play of the supposed hostility between Dorothy and Roger, but much of it was exaggerated. Of course they didn’t have direct contact after the break up, because he had married again. What I am certain about is that Dorothy wouldn’t have had that success second time around if Roger had not left her. It was definitely a case of ‘I’m going to show Roger’. She had a point to make, and she succeeded.”
Apart from going to her concerts Emily attended many of Dorothy’s recording sessions including for For Once In My Life, Till and My Way, which took place in the former Pye Studios in Great Cumberland Place, just behind Marble Arch in London’s West End. “She always worked with a full orchestra, and there was definitely no over-dubbing. Everything was done live. It wasn’t until after Dorothy died, and I listened to her records again, that I began to realise just how good a singer she was back in the Seventies. When she did her Palladium comeback concert at the age of 55, her voice was still as clear as a bell.”
Emily recalls that magical evening with great affection. “The place was packed and buzzing, and I remember being scared to death waiting for Dorothy to come on stage. She refused to see anybody before the show. I was nervous for Dorothy because I knew how she must be feeling – when she walked on stage you could hear the nervousness in her voice. Once her performance got underway her confidence began to return however. I remember that there were even people sitting in the aisles because there wasn’t a spare seat to be found anywhere in the theatre.”
© 2004 www.dorothysquires.co.uk
