Dudley Moore’s life wasn’t easy - he was born with a club foot and stunted growth, and throughout his life struggled with depression - but no matter what happened to him, he always found solace in two things: comedy and music.
His career had more than its share of ups and downs, including stage and screen triumphs, career reversals and, finally; a fatal disease. But every step of the way the actor/comedian/musician - who died at 66 of supranuclear palsy; an incurable neurological disease like Parkinson’s - knew where to turn for comfort.
"If I couldn’t laugh or enjoy music," he said in 1994, "I’d be done for. As long as I have those, everything else is negotiable."
Dudley Stuart John Moore was born on April 19, 1935, in Dagenham, a small English town. Growing up, his physical problems which required frequent hospitalization - kept him away from athletics and most social activities, but fostered his lifelong interest in music. By the! time he was a teen-ager be had mastered the piano, violin and organ, as well as developing a substantial knowledge of both classical music and jazz.
Moore attended London’s Guildenhall School of Music and Drama and then continued to Magdalen College at Oxford University, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in English in 1957 and in musical composition the following year.
It was at Oxford, however, that the would-be musician’s career plans were sidetracked. Falling in with a talented group of writer/comedians, Moore found that his long-standing penchant for mordant, often self-deprecatory humor went over well with them. Soon he was performing and/or writing for college revues, specializing in the grand English traditions of bawdy songs and cross-dressing humor.
After graduating from Oxford, Moore joined with three schoolmates - Peter Cook, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller - to form the comedy ensemble Beyond the Fringe which won a Tony Award for their Broadway show, "Beyond the Fringe."
The group broke up in the mid-1960s. Cook and Moore continued to perform together, starring in a BBC television show, "Not Only... But Also" and a hit Broadway show, "Good EvenIng" (1973). They also appeared together in several movies, most notably "Bedazzled."
Cook and Moore were a perfect team, but in 1975 the two split, in part because of Cook's alcoholism. Moore headed for Hollywood to seek stardom on the big screen.
He was a most unusual Hollywood star - middle-aged, British, short and cerebral in an age whose leading comedians were young, big and tasteless Americans from the "Saturday Night Live" mill such as Chase, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
Moore scored big with his film, "Arthur" (1981). He somehow brought a whimsical charm to his role as an alcoholic and self-indulgent millionaire’s son, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination in the process.
After that peak, however, Hollywood seemed to have trouble figuring out what to do with Moore.
Moore still brought charm to his roles, making the most even of a role as a megalomanical conductor obsessed with his wife’s possible infidelity in "Unfaithfully Yours" (1984), but he seemed less interested in them as the years passed.
Instead, after the failure of "Dudley" he allowed his onscreen career to fade. He now moved into playing the piano or conducting either his own works or others at Symphony concerts across America.
In mid-1999, the 64-year-old actor/musician began to have vision problems and difficulty swallowing. He was subsequently diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy.In revealing his illness, Moore appealed to be allowed to deal with it in privacy but said he was authorizing the disclosure in the hope of drawing more attention to the disease and its other victims.
"Music is my main comfort now," he told the BBC in 2000. "But it is difficult to know that all the keys are there to be played, and I can’t play them."