Jazz Professional               

Interview

Dudley was born Dudley Stuart John Moore on April 19th, 1935. Despite his working-class origins in Dagenham, East London, his diminutive stature and a deformed left foot, Dudley's determination to succeed overcame all barriers. His musical career began as a chorister and organist in his church, and he went on to become a talented pianist, with degrees in music and composition from Oxford. Later in life he recorded several albums of jazz and appeared in concert with the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra.

Before breaking into the movies, Dudley departed his musical career to become, with comic Peter Cooke, part of the four-man comedy revue "Beyond the Fringe”, a precursor to the Monty Python group. The revue played for two years in London, then Broadway, and was probably the greatest assembly of young comic talent to emerge in Britain in the late 20th century. He went on with Peter Cook to form a double-act, enjoying popular success with their stage shows and making movie appearances in "The Wrong Box" (1966) and "Bedazzled" (1967). Dudley also composed the scores for several films including "30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia" (1967), "Inadmissible Evidence" (1968) and "Staircase" (1969).

His big break into films came after he settled in California and met director Blake Edwards in a therapy group. Blake decided to give him a screen test when George Segal walked out of his production of "10," and Moore soon became a Hollywood star.

Dudley Moore married Suzy Kendall in 1958, Tuesday Weld in 1975, with whom he had a son, Patrick; Brogan Lane in 1988 and Nicole Rothschild in 1994, with a second son, Nicholas.

His death on March 27, 2002 at a friend's home in Plainfield, New Jersey, came from complications with the degenerative brain condition progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease similar to Parkinson's that affects one in every 100,000 people.