Ahead of her 90th birthday, EastEnders actress June Brown has opened up about the suicide of her first husband.
June has played Dot Cotton on and off since the show started some 32 years ago, but it’s now been revealed that her life off-screen has been just as dramatic as it has on.
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She met her first husband, actor John Garley at The Old Vic in 1950, despite the fact they both had affairs, in an interview with The Sun Online, June described him as: “A lovely person and the wittiest man I’ve ever known.”
In 1957, tragedy struck when John gassed himself to death.
In her interview, she recalled how she was the one who found his body.
“I walked into the bedroom and there was Johnny, lying on the bed, the gas fire propped up next to him.
“I tried giving him artificial respiration. Suicide was a criminal offence in the late 1950s. But after an hour, I realised I’d better call an ambulance.
“I’d got him breathing again, but it was obvious he was suffering brain damage.
“He lasted three days in hospital before dying.”
June was just 30-years old at the time and they’d been married only seven years.
Her guilt at her husband’s death was made worse by the fact she’d left him the money for the gas meter.
She told the publication:
“I didn’t want to think that if I hadn’t left him the one and eight pence he wouldn’t have been able to do it.”
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Happily June remarried her second husband Bob, and they were together for 45 years before he passed away in 2003.
During the interview the EastEnders legend said she had absolutely no plans to give up her role as Dot because she’d be “utterly bored” if she did.
She also revealed how she’d been quite the wild cat in her younger years, sleeping with many men before she was married, and always “falling in love”.
But her life has known much more tragedy than just John’s suicide. Her brother and sister both died when they were young, and her second child, Chloe, was born prematurely and passed away at just 16 days.