Doone was born in
Redditch,
Worcestershire, from a Worcestershire family in reduced circumstances, but with a background that reportedly included a link with
Shakespeare. His father was a needle factory foreman. He left home at sixteen to begin his career as a dancer with no money. He led a precarious existence, scraping by on what he earned modeling at the Royal Academy and the Slade in order to pay for the lessons. At 19, he left London for Paris, where he became a
protégé and lover of Jean
Cocteau. They lived together until Doone's death in
Northampton in 1966. In 1932, after Medley moved to London, the play-reading group evolved into the
Group Theatre (London), which performed left-wing and
avant-garde plays during the 1930s and again during its revival in the 1950s. Despite his prominence in avant-garde theatre, Doone was thought to be a muddled and ineffective stage director by
W. H. Auden,
Stephen Spender and others, who tried to steer the Group Theatre into more effective productions and organization. In the 1950s, Doone founded the Theatre School at
Morley College, and worked there until his premature retirement as a result of
multiple sclerosis. A portrait of Doone as a young man was painted by
Cedric Morris ca. 1923. ==Career==