Dora Bryan - Personal Life

Personal Life

She was married to former Lancashire and Cumberland cricketer Bill Lawton until his death as a result of Alzheimer's disease in August 2008. The couple met in Oldham during World War II and were married at Werneth St Thomas, Oldham, in 1954. During her husband's final years she reduced her public commitments to enable herself to look after him, as well as suffering with health problems herself, including a serious operation for a hernia.

She once owned Clarges Hotel at 115–119 Marine Parade on Brighton's seafront, which was used as an exterior location in the films Carry On Girls and Carry On at Your Convenience. She and her husband were forced to sell the bulk of the building as a result of bankruptcy, but they retained a flat with a sea view on the first floor for many years. Still maintaining its original structure, the rooms of the hotel have been reconverted into flats, which are rented and owned by local residents.

In 2005 Bryan had to leave Last of the Summer Wine, reportedly because of her forgetfulness and inability to remember her lines.

She is now wheelchair bound and resides in a nursing home in Hove in frail health.

According to the Daily Mail (19 May 2009): "Sir Cliff Richard is doing a great act of kindness for his 85-year-old friend, the ailing Dora Bryan, who is languishing in a council-funded bed in a Hove nursing home.... Cliff appeared at an all-star fundraiser for Dora on 31 May at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. Plans to transport Dora to London look precarious. 'She is extremely frail and hardly eating at all,' reveals organiser Tony Hardman."

The Dora Bryan Charity Gala was held at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, on 31 May 2009. The show was ticketed in order to benefit Bryan's two nominated charities, the Variety Club and the Alzheimer's Society, and all celebrity guests and performers donated their time to these causes.