DUDLEY MOORE
1935 -2002
The
public probably know Moor for his acting and comedy but may not realise he
was a talented Jazz musician. Moore
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, his 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.
He worked with Johnny Dankworth before forming his own trio with Pete McGurk
(bass) and Chris Karan (drums), and recorded several sessions for Decca
Records.
Moore
cited Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson as two of his main musical influences.
His jazz playing was notable for his lightness of touch and deft right-hand
filigrees although his eclecticism, allied to his absorption with other
interests, inhibited the development of a truly identifiable personal style.
For
a while he successfully performed jazz while concurrently appearing in the
groundbreaking comedy revue Beyond The Fringe in London and New York with
Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett. 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.
Moore's
whimsical sense of humour fitted oddly with the more savage satirical style
of his partners. "Apart from his musical contributions to the
show," Cook wrote in Esquire in 1974, "Dudley's suggestions were
treated with benign contempt by the rest of us."
In
1961, Cook bought a strip joint in Soho and started The Establishment Club
featuring Lenny Bruce, Frankie Howerd and a young Australian called Barry
Humphries. In the cellar, Moore played jazz and The Dudley Moore Trio was
born.
Music
was central to Moore's life. An exceptionally gifted pianist who could sight-read
and extemporise with remarkable ease, he had an amazing ability to change
from jazz to classical. Classical pianists praised his performances of Bach
fugues; the jazz fraternity dug his free-flowing, lissom style.
Moore
went on to form a double-act with Cook, 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).
 By the
late-60s Moore's acting career began to eclipse his jazz work. His big break
in 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
player.) In later
years, Moore returned to recording and performing and resurrected the Dudley
Moore Trio.
In
a biography published in 1997 Moore emerged as a troubled soul who, though he
had seemingly succeeded at everything, remained deeply unfulfilled. He confessed to being driven by
feelings of inferiority about his working-class origins and because of his
height of five feet, two-and-a-half inches (156 centimetres). In later life
he also spoke of the pain of being rejected by his mother because he was born
with a deformed left foot.
Comedians,
he said in an interview with Newsday in 1980, are often driven by such
feelings: "I certainly did feel inferior. Because of class. Because of
strength. Because of height. ... I guess if I'd been able to hit somebody in
the nose, I wouldn't have been a comic."
His
brilliance as both jazz and classical pianist was constantly undermined by
his personal life. He married four times (each marriage lasted only a couple
of years) - in 1968 to Suzy Kendall, in 1975 to Tuesday Weld, in 1988 Brogan
Lane and in 1994 Nicole Rothschild.
In 1990 he
achieved something of the recognition his musical talents deserved when he
co-starred on Channel 4's series about the orchestra with Sir George Solti.
He followed this in 1993 with his Concerto with the conductor Michael Tilson
Thomas.
He
also made several concert tours playing piano duets with Rena Fruchter. It
was during one of these that she noticed Moore was playing somewhat
erratically; in May 1999 he was diagnosed with the rare degenerative brain
disease, progressive supranuclear palsy.
Moore
always returned to music in times of stress. "I can't imagine not having
music in my life,  playing for
myself or for other people. If I was asked, 'Which would you give up,' I'd
have to say acting," he said in an interview with The Associated Press
in 1988.
Riddled
with self-doubt and insecurities from an early age he was undoubtedly anxious
to be accepted as a musician; yet he often seemed vulnerable, and rather
lost. Whether in Beyond the Fringe, the movie business, London, LA or New
York, Moore never quite fitted. A colleague speaking on the BBC's Omnibus
arts show described him as: "the funniest and the saddest man I ever
knew."
Moore
died on 27 March 2002, in New Jersey, aged 66. He is survived by sons from
his second and fourth marriages.
|
