|
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE (April 19,
1935 – March 27, 2002), was a British comedian, actor and musician. He
became famous as a performer in "Beyond the Fringe" in the 1960s, and
later for his work with Peter Cook. He gained worldwide recognition in
the Hollywood movie 10 with Bo Derek.
****
Born April 19, 1935
Dagenham, Essex, England
Died March 27, 2002
Watchung, New Jersey
****
Early life
He was born to working-class parents who
showed little affection to their offspring (as his older sister publicly
revealed) in Dagenham, Essex, England, and he was notably short: 5' 2½"
(1.59 m). He was born with a club foot which required extensive hospital
treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the
butt of jokes by other children. Seeking refuge from his problems, he
became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He
rapidly developed into a talented pianist and organist and was playing
the organ at church weddings by age 14. He attended Dagenham County High
School where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter
Cork. Cork later went on to become a friend and confidant to Moore,
corresponding with him until 1994.
While studying music and composition at
Oxford University (Magdalen College, where he was an organ scholar),
Moore performed with Alan Bennett in the Oxford Revue. Bennett then
recommended him to the producer putting together Beyond the Fringe, a
comedy revue which many see as a forerunner to Monty Python's Flying
Circus. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s satire boom.
After enormous success in Britain, it transferred to the USA, where it
was also a hit.
During his university years, Moore became
passionately interested in jazz and soon became an accomplished jazz
pianist and composer as well as working with leading musicians such as
John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. In 1960 he left Dankworth's band to work
on Beyond the Fringe. Later in the 1960s he formed the acclaimed "Dudley
Moore Trio" (with drummer Chris Karan and bassists Pete McGurk and later
Peter Morgan), who performed regularly on British television, made
numerous recordings, and had a long-running residency at Peter Cook's
club, The Establishment.
Pete and Dud
After following the Establishment to New
York City, Moore returned to the UK and was offered his own series on
the BBC. Not Only... But Also (1965) was commissioned as a vehicle for
Moore, but when he invited Peter Cook on as a guest, their comedy
partnership was so notable that it became a fixture of the series. Cook
and Moore are most remembered for their sketches as two working-class
men, Pete and Dud, in macs and cloth caps, commenting on politics and
the arts, but they fashioned a series of character one-offs, usually
with Moore in the role of interviewer to one of Cook's upper-class
eccentrics. The pair developed an unorthodox method for scripting the
material by using a tape recorder to tape an adlibbed routine that they
would then have transcribed and edited. This would not leave enough time
to fully rehearse the script so they often had a set of cue cards. Moore
was famous for "corpsing"—the programmes often went on live, and Cook
would deliberately make him laugh in order to get an even bigger
reaction from the studio audience. Regrettably, many of the videotapes
and film reels of these seminal TV shows were later erased by the BBC
(an affliction which wiped out large portions of other British
television productions as well, such as Doctor Who), although some of
the soundtracks (which were issued on record) have survived.
Moore and Cook co-starred in the film
Bedazzled (1967) with Eleanor Bron, and also had tours called Behind the
Fridge and Good Evening. Bedazzled was remade in 2000 with Brendan
Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley in the lead roles.
However, their three albums of the late
1970s as Derek and Clive, were widely condemned for their use of obscene
language and shocking, ad-libbed content. Shortly following the last of
these, Ad Nauseam, Moore made a break with Cook, whose alcoholism was
affecting his work, to concentrate on his film career. Ironically, when
Moore began to manifest the symptoms of the disease that eventually
killed him, it was at first suspected that he too had a drinking
problem. Further irony manifested itself in two of Moore's early
starring roles, most famously the titular drunken playboy Arthur, and to
a lesser extent the heavy drinker George Webber in 10.
Later life
In the late 1970s, Moore moved to
Hollywood, where he appeared in Foul Play (1978) with Goldie Hawn and
Chevy Chase. The following year saw his breakout role in Blake Edwards's
10, which he followed up with the movie Wholly Moses. Soon thereafter
Arthur, an even bigger hit than 10, which also starred Liza Minnelli and
Sir John Gielgud (who won an Oscar for his role as Arthur's stern but
loving caretaker) and Geraldine Fitzgerald (who played his wealthy,
socially prominent, relentless grandmother who insists that he marry the
daughter of a business associate of the family, and threatens to
disinherit him if he doesn't do so). Moore was nominated for a Best
Actor Academy Award but lost to Henry Fonda (for "On Golden Pond").
His subsequent films, including an Arthur
sequel and an animated adaptation of King Kong, were inconsistent in
terms of both critical and commercial reception. In later years Cook
would wind-up Moore by claiming he preferred Arthur 2: On the Rocks to
Arthur.
In addition to acting, Moore continued to
work as a composer and pianist, writing scores for a number of films and
giving piano concerts, which were highlighted by his popular parodies of
classical favourites.
Moore was married to actresses Suzy Kendall
and Tuesday Weld (by whom he had a son, Patrick, in 1976). His third and
fourth wives were Brogan Lane and Nicole Rothschild (one son, Nicholas,
born in 1995). Moore dated and was a favorite of some of Hollywood's
most attractive women, including the statuesque Susan Anton; he was
generally known as "Cuddly Dudley".
Moore was deeply affected by the untimely
death of Peter Cook in 1995, and for weeks would regularly telephone
Cook's home in London just to get the answerphone and hear his friend's
voice. Moore attended Cook's memorial service in London and at the time
many people who knew him noted that Moore was behaving strangely and
attributed it to grief or drinking. In November 1995, Moore teamed up
with friend and humorist Martin Lewis in organizing a two-day salute to
Cook in Los Angeles which Moore co-hosted with Lewis.
Illness and death
In September 1999, Moore announced he was
suffering from progressive supranuclear palsy, for which there is no
treatment.
In June 2001, Dudley Moore was made a
Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE). Despite his
deteriorating condition he attended the ceremony, mute and
wheelchair-bound, at Buckingham Palace to collect his honour.
On March 27, 2002, he died of pneumonia,
which was a side effect of progressive supranuclear palsy, in Watchung,
New Jersey. He was 66 years old. Moore was interred in Hillside Cemetery
located in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.
In December 2004, the Channel 4 television
network in the UK broadcast Not Only But Always, a television movie
dramatising the relationship between Moore and Cook, although the focus
of the production was on Cook. Around the same time, the relationship
between the two was also the focus of a stage play called Pete and Dud:
Come Again.
Selected Filmography
1998 - The Mighty Kong
1995 - The Disappearance of Kevin Johnson
1992 - Blame It on the Bellboy
1990 - Crazy People
1988 - Arthur 2 : On the Rocks
1987 - Like Father, Like Son
1986 - The Adventures of Milo and Otis
(English voice over)
1985 - Santa Claus: The Movie
1984 - Best Defense
1984 - Micki & Maude
1984 - Unfaithfully Yours
1983 - Lovesick
1982 - Six Weeks
1981 - Arthur
1980 - Wholly Moses!
1980 - PBS Nova: "It's About Time"
1979 - 10
1978 - Foul Play
1977 - The Hound of the Baskervilles
1972 - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
1969 - The Bed Sitting Room
1967 - Bedazzled
1966 - The Wrong Box
UK chart singles
"Goodbye-ee" (1965) Peter Cook and Dudley
Moore
"The L.S. Bumble Bee" (1967) Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore
"Song for Suzy" (1972) Dudley Moore Trio —
upbeat jazz.
****
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the GNU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Moore
Date Article Copied:
January 2007
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time. |
