Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE (19 April 1935 – 27 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writer-performers in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe from 1960 that created a boom in satiric comedy. With a member of that team, Peter Cook, Moore collaborated on the BBC television series Not Only... But Also. As a popular double act, Moore's buffoonery contrasted with Cook's deadpan monologues.[1] They jointly received the 1966 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance and worked together on other projects until the mid-1970s, by which time Moore had settled in Los Angeles to concentrate on his film acting.
Dudley Moore
27 March 2002 (aged 66)
- Actor
- comedian
- musician
- composer
1961–1998
-
Brogan Lane(m. 1988; div. 1991)
Nicole Rothschild(m. 1994; div. 1998)
2
Moore's career as a comedy film actor was marked by hit films, particularly Bedazzled (1967), set in Swinging Sixties London (in which he co-starred with Cook) and Hollywood productions Foul Play (1978), 10 (1979) and Arthur (1981). For Arthur, Moore was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won a Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe for his performance in Micki & Maude (1984). Moore was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987 and was made a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on 16 November 2001 in what was his last public appearance.[2][3]
Early life[edit]
Moore was born at the original Charing Cross Hospital in central London, the son of Ada Francis (née Hughes), a secretary, and John Moore, a railway electrician from Glasgow.[4]
He had an older sister, Barbara.[5] Moore was brought up in the Becontree estate in Dagenham, Essex. He was short at 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and had club feet that required extensive hospital treatment. This made him the butt of jokes from other children. His right foot responded well to corrective treatment by the time he was six, but his left foot was permanently twisted and his left leg below the knee was withered. He remained self-conscious about this throughout his life.
Moore became a chorister at the age of six. At age 11 he earned a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music, where he took up harpsichord, organ, violin, musical theory and composition.[6] He rapidly developed into a highly talented pianist and organist and was playing the organ at local church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School where he received dedicated musical tuition from Peter Cork (1926–2012), who helped him towards his Oxford music scholarship. (Norma Winstone was another student of Cork's at Dagenham).[7] Cork was also a composer. Moore kept in touch until the mid-1990s and his letters to Cork were published in 2006.[8]
Moore won an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was tutored by the composer Bernard Rose.[6][9] While studying music and composition there, he also performed with Alan Bennett in The Oxford Revue. During his university years, Moore developed a love of jazz music and became an accomplished jazz pianist and composer. He began working with musicians such as John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. In 1960 he left Dankworth's band to work on Beyond the Fringe.
Restaurant[edit]
Tony Bill and Dudley Moore founded a restaurant in 1983 (closed in November 2000), 72 Market Street Oyster Bar and Grill, in Venice, California.[20][21]
Personal life[edit]
Moore was married and divorced four times: to actresses Suzy Kendall (15 June 1968 – 15 September 1972); Tuesday Weld (20 September 1975 – 18 July 1980), with whom he had a son, Patrick, on 26 February 1976; Brogan Lane (21 February 1988 – 1991);[22] and Nicole Rothschild (16 April 1994 – 1998), with whom he had a son, Nicholas, on 28 June 1995.[23][24][25][26]
Moore dated Susan Anton in the early 1980s, with a lot of talk being made of their height difference: Moore was 5 feet 2+1⁄2 inches (1.588 m) and Anton was 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m).
In 1994, Moore was arrested and charged with domestic assault after allegedly assaulting his then-girlfriend and soon-to-be wife, Nicole Rothschild.[27]
He maintained good relationships with Kendall, Weld, and Lane. However, he expressly prohibited Rothschild from attending his funeral since, at the time his illness became apparent, he was going through a difficult divorce with her while at the same time sharing a Los Angeles house with her and her previous husband.[24]
Illness and death[edit]
In April 1997, after spending five days in a New York hospital, Moore was informed that he had calcium deposits in the basal ganglia of his brain and irreversible frontal lobe damage. He underwent quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in London and also suffered four strokes.[28]
On 30 September 1999, Moore announced that he was suffering from the terminal degenerative brain disorder progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a Parkinson-plus syndrome,[28]
some of the early symptoms being so similar to intoxication that he had been reported as being drunk,[29][30][31][32][33] and that the illness had been diagnosed earlier in the year.[28] The disease eventually required him to use a wheelchair.
Moore died on the morning of 27 March 2002[12] as a result of pneumonia, secondary to immobility caused by his PSP, in Plainfield, New Jersey, at the age of 66. Rena Fruchter was holding his hand when he died; she reported his final words were "I can hear the music all around me."[34][35] Moore was interred at Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Fruchter later wrote a memoir of their relationship titled Dudley Moore (Ebury Press, 2004).
Honours and awards[edit]
In 1981, Moore won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his role in Arthur, for which he was also Oscar-nominated. In November 2001, Moore was appointed a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE). Despite his deteriorating condition, he attended the ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 16 November to collect his honour in a wheelchair.[19] It was his last public appearance.[3]