June Brown, EastEnders’ Dot Cotton dies aged 95
Actress June Muriel Brown, who played Dot Cotton on BBC’s EastEnders for more than three decades had died at the age of 95. Brown first appeared in the series in 1985, the year EastEnders was created. She stayed until 1993, returning to play the same character from 1987 until 2020. Her private life was touched by extremes of emotion – with great happiness, romantic love affairs, terrible heartache, and family tragedy.
June Brown was born in Needham Market, Suffolk in 1927. Her father Harry was a successful businessman until he went bust investing money in German banks before World War Two. Her mother, Louisa, was a milliner – who June was convinced loved her far less than her four other siblings. Her grandfather was from Scotland, and her mother was of Italian heritage. Brown would describe herself as a “mongrel”. Her younger brother, John, died of pneumonia in 1932 when he was just 15 days old. Two years later, June lost her 8-year-old sister Marise to meningitis. Brown who was academically able won a scholarship to Ipswich High School as she wanted to train as a biologist- but her father objected by saying it would be a waste of money fearing she “would only go and get married”. Brown also served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service at the end of the war, based in Scotland, and during her time in the WRNS, she discovered the joys of acting.
She won a place at London’s Old Vic Theatre School where she met and married her first husband, actor John Garley. He suffered from depression and took his own life by gassing himself using the coins she left him for the gas meter, in 1957. Thereafter, she married Garley who also died. Professionally she was very successful, as she spent years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing on stage with Alec Guinness, John Gielgud, and Peggy Ashcroft. She played Heeda Gabler and Lady Macbeth but never got to play Cleopatra her one lifelong regret. In 1958, she married actor Robert Arnold who star in the BBC series Dixon of Dock Green, the couple shared 45 years of marriage and had six children in just seven years, before Arnold died of pneumonia in 2003. Her second daughter Chloe was born prematurely at 28 weeks and died after 16 days. There were appearances in Coronation Street and Doctor Who. When Dot Cotton arrived in Albert Square in 1985, June Brown was in her later fifties. She had a contract for three months but stayed for more than a quarter of a century. Dot’s character was chain-smoking, tragic-comic, and gossiping guided by the scriptures. In real life, Dot was a devout Christian, an ardent supporter of the Conservative Party, who chain-smoked from the age of 16 and would claim that tests had proved her blood was the colour of nicotine.
She claimed to have planned her funeral carefully saying “ I want to be buried at sea. The Britannia Shipping Company drops you off around the Isle of Wight. I’ll be in a nice white nightie and they wrap you in a balsa wood coffin and weight it.”