Born: 5 February 1926, Ireland
Died: 31 December 2017
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Doreen Singuineau, Doreen Jenner
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Angela Byrne. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Keogh, Doreen (married names Singuineau; Jenner) (1926–2017), actor, was born in Dublin on 5 February 1926 to John Joseph Keogh and his wife, Alice Celia/Cecilia (née Mullany); her siblings were Dermot, John and Hilda (married name O’Donnell). John Keogh worked variously as a clerk, an accountant and, latterly, a travelling salesman. Both he and Alice were from lower middle-class families; his father was a relieving (public welfare) officer and hers was an ironmonger and salesman.
Keogh set her sights on a career in acting at an early age, later recalling that she told the teaching nuns at Holy Faith convent school, Clontarf, about her ambitions when she was seven years old; she was ‘always the first to volunteer to dance, sing or recite’ (Kentish Express, 6 Dec. 1985). On one occasion, seated in the front row at a school play in which her older sister was performing, eight-year-old Keogh delivered the lines before Hilda could. She won prizes for elocution in feiseanna in the late 1930s, and secured her first walk-on part at the Gate Theatre – then the 6th earl of Longford’s company – at the age of twelve. Her mother, who encouraged her acting ambitions but also wanted her to train as a secretary, enrolled her in the Abbey School of Acting. Keogh left school at fifteen to devote herself to her stage training. Soon she was acting and singing on RTÉ radio, and had bit parts in Longford’s adaptation of ‘Oedipus, the tyrant’ (1942) and his ‘The vineyard’ (1943).
Keogh moved to London in the mid-1940s, a time of mass migration of Irish women to Britain. Britain offered better prospects for actors; the BBC began television broadcasting in 1936, something the Irish state broadcaster, Radio Éireann, would not do until 1961. One of Keogh’s earliest roles in Britain was in a 1945 BBC radio adaptation of A. E. Coppard’s short story ‘The man from Kilsheelan’; she would go on to appear in dozens of radio plays over the course of the next six decades. She made her television debut in the role of Miss Fulton in Denis Johnston’s BBC crime drama Death at Newtownstewart (1948). On 6 October 1954 Keogh married Trinidadian stage and screen actor Frank Singuineau in Fulham Register Office; he had immigrated to London in the mid-1940s.
Corrie’s first barmaid
Keogh became a household name in Britain when she was cast as barmaid Concepta Reilly in the Granada Television (later ITV) soap opera Coronation Street. She made her debut in the fifth episode in December 1960 and over the following four years played a character who endured marital infidelity, the kidnapping of her son, and widowhood. As the first barmaid at the Rover’s Return pub, Keogh ‘created the template for a role that would become central to life on the fabled cobbled streets of Weatherfield’ (Stage, 17 Jan. 2018). Her stage experience was valuable on set; in those early days the show was broadcast live and she was able to improvise and react, unruffled, to the unexpected. She later admitted that she had initially joined Coronation Street with the intention of working there for three weeks, but ended up staying for four years; being a fixture on the show meant living on location in Manchester. Having appeared in a total of 320 episodes, in 1964 her character, along with half-a-dozen others, was culled by a new producer, Tim Aspinall; the storyline had Concepta move back to Ireland with her bus inspector husband, Harry Hewitt (played by Ivan Beavis). Keogh occasionally reprised the role until 1975.
Keogh and Singuineau’s marriage ended in divorce in July 1963 while Keogh and Beavis’s off-screen relationship blossomed. They met on the ITV set, worked closely together playing an engaged and later married couple, they both lived in Manchester and they toured England making countless personal appearances at galas and other public events throughout 1961–2. Their public profile soared in tandem with Coronation Street’s success, and they remained hugely popular even after her divorce; in March 1963 a police escort was required to conduct them safely from a venue in Morecambe that had become overcrowded by excited fans. Keogh later recalled, ‘The almost overwhelming reaction to the show took the cast by surprise … we were mobbed wherever we went’ (Dundee Weekly News, 9 Dec. 1995).
Keogh and some of the other actors who lost their jobs on Coronation Street in 1964 toured Britain shortly afterwards as part of Vince Powell and John Finch’s unsuccessful stage comedy ‘Firm foundations’. A versatile actor, Keogh secured roles in a range of stage productions across Britain from the 1950s to 1980s, mostly in comedies. These included the West End productions of Colin Welland’s ‘Say goodnight to grandma’ (1973), Mary O’Malley’s ‘Once a catholic’ (1978) and Eduardo de Filippo’s ‘Ducking out’ (1982). With the Royal Shakespeare Company, she played Mrs O’Toole in Mary O’Malley’s ‘Look out … here comes trouble!’ (1978) and Mrs Madigan – alongside Judi Dench – in ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1980). While she described stage acting as her ‘first love’ and some of her performances were well reviewed, she rarely took starring roles and never eclipsed the success she achieved in Coronation Street (Maidstone Telegraph, 5 Apr. 1974).
As an Irish actor in Britain she experienced the typecasting that was widespread into the late twentieth century. This was in part attributable to the combination of her physical appearance and her accent – which she did, however, clip for British audiences. When she played the lead role in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s profession’ at Connaught Theatre, Worthing, in 1968, one reviewer commented on her ‘flouncing, flamboyant Mrs Warren … With hair of rust and a voice to match’ (Worthing Gazette, 26 June 1968). Her many roles in Irish plays included parts in John Millington Synge’s ‘Playboy of the western world’ (1951) and his ‘Well of the saints’ (1954); Sean O’Casey’s ‘Purple dust’ (1953) and ‘Juno and the paycock’ (1954); and as Meg in a reworking of Brendan Behan’s ‘The hostage’ (1970). This pattern continued late into her career; in the 1990s and early 2000s she appeared in productions of plays by Michael Harding, Brian Friel and O’Casey. Overall, her style was light and energetic; in 1960, in a typical review, she was praised for her ‘wonderful vitality’ as the maid, Bernadette, in O’Casey’s ‘The drums of Father Ned’ (Stage, 10 Nov. 1960).
In January 1969 Keogh successfully auditioned for a part in the musical Darling Lili and was whisked across the Atlantic to work alongside Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson. She spent the first two weeks of the shoot at Paramount Studios in a ‘total daze’ (Kentish Express, 6 Dec. 1985). An unsubstantiated anecdote from her time in Los Angeles suggests that the director Vincente Minnelli invited Keogh to coach Barbara Streisand in a Cockney accent for the latter’s role in On a clear day you can see forever (1970). On the verge of international big-screen success but feeling homesick, an incident involving a firearm at a neighbouring house precipitated her decision to return to England. Life in Los Angeles did not suit Keogh, who preferred rural settings to urban bustle. By 1973 she was living in a picturesque cottage in the village of Rolvenden, Kent, where she met builder and second world war Royal Air Force veteran Jack Jenner. They married in Ashford register office on 24 January 1976, and lived in a series of rural cottages in Kent.
Return to the Irish stage
Keogh and Jenner moved to Co. Wicklow in 1988, a relocation announced by her appearances on Dublin’s stages. In 1988 she played in the Irish premiere of Jeffrey Archer’s ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ at the Gaiety Theatre and appeared the following year in the Abbey Theatre’s revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s ‘You can’t take it with you’ (1989). Her many subsequent Irish stage appearances included the Druid production of Jean Anouilh’s ‘Antigone’ in Galway (1990); Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Hedda Gabler’ (1991), alongside Fiona Shaw; and Oscar Wilde’s ‘The importance of being Earnest’ (1997). Shortly after her return to Ireland she secured the role of Mary O’Hanlon in the new RTÉ soap Fair city, remaining in the part until 1995. She stepped away from the soap because of a desire to return to the theatre and to give her the freedom to take up film offers, though she subsequently accepted other television roles, including that of Imelda Egan in Ballykissangel (1997–9), Audrey Gifford in Cold feet (1998–2003) and Mrs Dineen – whose physical fight with Mrs Doyle over a tea-shop bill has earned a lasting place in Irish popular culture – in Father Ted (1998). Her last television role was as Mary Carroll in The Royle family (1998–2006). Keogh sporadically played supporting roles in films over five decades, including the 1967 moralistic drama Two a penny with Cliff Richard and a 1983 adaptation of To the lighthouse with Kenneth Branagh. Later, she had bit parts in the IRA hunger-strike drama Some mother’s son (1996), Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto (2006) and the Irish zombie horror Boy eats girl (2006).
Keogh regarded acting as the most important thing in her life. Described as having a ‘vital and energetic personality’ (Maidstone Telegraph, 5 Apr. 1974), she was an avid supporter of Liverpool Football Club, was involved in local charities in Kent, including fundraising for guide dogs for the blind, and, as a lover of animals, at one time had two dogs and thirty-four ducks. Later, in Co. Wicklow, she rescued donkeys and was a patron of a Cork donkey sanctuary. Keogh lived the last few years of her life in St Columba’s nursing home, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, where she died on 31 December 2017. Her funeral took place on 4 January 2018 in St Colmcille’s church, Inistiogue, Co Kilkenny, followed by burial at Cappagh cemetery, Co. Kilkenny.