Best known as being one half of classic comedy duo Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, The late great English actor, comedian and composer Dudley Moore CBE, sadly passed away 27th March 2002. Born 19th April in 1935, He first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook. His fame as a comedy film actor was later heightened by success in hit Hollywood films such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He received an Oscar nomination for the latter role. He was frequently referred to in the media as “Cuddly Dudley” or “The Sex Thimble”, a reference to his short stature and reputation as a “ladies’ man”.
AN AUDIENCE with Dudley MOORE http://youtu.be/bRShQGG5zDo
He had a prolific film career and appeared in many other films too including The Wrong Box, Bedazzled, 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, The Bed-Sitting Room, Monte Carlo or Bust, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Foul Play, 10, Derek and Clive Get the Horn, Wholly Moses! Arthur, Six Weeks, Lovesick, Romantic Comedy, Unfaithfully Yours, Micki + Maude, Best Defense, Santa Claus: The Movie, Like Father Like Son, Arthur 2: On the Rocks, The Adventures of Milo and Otis, Crazy People, Blame It on the Bellboy, Really Wild Animals, Dudley Daddy’s Girls, Parallel Lives, The Disappearance of Kevin Johnson and The Mighty Kong.
Sadly In 1999, Moore announced that he was suffering from the terminal degenerative brain disorder progressive supranuclear palsy, some of whose early symptoms were so similar to intoxication that he had been accused of being drunk, and that the illness had been diagnosed earlier in the year.
In June 2001, Moore was appointed a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE) and Despite his deteriorating condition, he attended the ceremony, mute and wheelchair-bound, at Buckingham Palace to collect his honour. He died on 27 March 2002, as a result of pneumonia, secondary to immobility caused by the palsy, in Plainfield, New Jersey. Rena Fruchter was holding his hand when he died, and she reported his final words were, “I can hear the music all around me.” Moore was interred in Hillside Cemetery in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Fruchter later wrote a memoir of their relationship (Dudley Moore, Ebury Press, 2004). In December 2004, the Channel 4 television station in the United Kingdom broadcast Not Only But Always, a TV movie dramatising the relationship between Moore and Cook, although the principal focus of the production was on Cook. Around the same time the relationship between the two was also the subject of a stage play called Pete and Dud: Come Again.
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