Dudley Moore

Dudley Moore (born April 19, 1935, Dagenham, Essex, England—died March 27, 2002, Plainfield, New Jersey, U.S.) was a British actor, comedian, and musician whose career ranged from jazz and classical musician and composer to satiric comedian to Hollywood movie star.

Moore attended Magdalen College, Oxford, on a music scholarship, earning bachelor’s degrees in 1957 and 1958, and then toured as a jazz pianist. In 1960 Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett created the satiric revue Beyond the Fringe for the Edinburgh Festival. The show thereafter was performed in London and on Broadway, where it won its creators a special Tony Award in 1963. Cook and Moore then teamed up for the television sketch comedy series Not Only…But Also (1965–66; 1970); the films The Wrong Box (1966), Bedazzled (1967), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1977); three “Derek and Clive” comedy record albums in the 1970s; and, beginning in 1971, a follow-up to Beyond the Fringe. At first called Behind the Fridge, it toured Australia before being presented in London and then, retitled Good Evening, in the United States, where it won Cook and Moore a special Tony Award in 1974. Moore also composed film scores, including those for Bedazzled and Inadmissible Evidence (1968), and starred on the London stage in the comedy Play It Again, Sam (1969).

Following the end of his partnership with Cook, Moore made his Hollywood debut in 1978 in Foul Play. Moore then gained further renown for his roles in two blockbuster motion pictures—as a musician seeking the perfect woman in 10 (1979) and as a lovable millionaire drunk in Arthur (1981). Most of his other films, as well as two television series—Dudley (1993) and Daddy’s Girls (1994)—were less successful, however, and Moore concentrated on his music career until a rare neurological disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, caused his health to deteriorate. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2001.