Stuart Moore Popular Books

Stuart Moore Biography & Facts

Dudley Stuart John Moore CBE (19 April 1935 – 27 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, musician and composer. Moore first came to prominence in the UK as a leading figure in the British satire boom of the 1960s. He was one of the four writer-performers in the comedy revue Beyond the Fringe from 1960 that created a boom in satiric comedy. With a member of that team, Peter Cook, Moore collaborated on the BBC television series Not Only... But Also. As a popular double act, Moore's buffoonery contrasted with Cook's deadpan monologues. They jointly received the 1966 British Academy Television Award for Best Entertainment Performance and worked together on other projects until the mid-1970s, by which time Moore had settled in Los Angeles to concentrate on his film acting. Moore's career as a comedy film actor was marked by hit films, particularly Bedazzled (1967), set in Swinging Sixties London (in which he co-starred with Cook) and Hollywood productions Foul Play (1978), 10 (1979) and Arthur (1981). For Arthur, Moore was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won a Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe for his performance in Micki & Maude (1984). Moore was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1987 and was made a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on 16 November 2001 in what was his last public appearance. Early life Moore was born at the original Charing Cross Hospital in central London, the son of Ada Francis (née Hughes), a secretary, and John Moore, a railway electrician from Glasgow. He had an older sister, Barbara. Moore was brought up in the Becontree estate in Dagenham, Essex. He was short at 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and had club feet that required extensive hospital treatment. This made him the butt of jokes from other children. His right foot responded well to corrective treatment by the time he was six, but his left foot was permanently twisted and his left leg below the knee was withered. He remained self-conscious about this throughout his life. Moore became a chorister at the age of six. At age 11 he earned a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music, where he took up harpsichord, organ, violin, musical theory and composition. He rapidly developed into a highly talented pianist and organist and was playing the organ at local church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School where he received dedicated musical tuition from Peter Cork (1926–2012), who helped him towards his Oxford music scholarship. (Norma Winstone was another student of Cork's at Dagenham). Cork was also a composer. Moore kept in touch until the mid-1990s and his letters to Cork were published in 2006. Moore won an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was tutored by the composer Bernard Rose. While studying music and composition there, he also performed with Alan Bennett in The Oxford Revue. During his university years, Moore developed a love of jazz music and became an accomplished jazz pianist and composer. He began working with musicians such as John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. In 1960 he left Dankworth's band to work on Beyond the Fringe. Career Beyond the Fringe John Bassett, a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford recommended Moore, his jazz bandmate and a rising cabaret talent, to producer Robert Ponsonby, who was putting together a comedy revue entitled Beyond the Fringe. Bassett also chose Jonathan Miller. Moore then recommended Alan Bennett, who in turn suggested Peter Cook. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s UK satire boom, although the show's original runs in Edinburgh and the provinces in 1960 had had a lukewarm response. When the revue transferred to the Fortune Theatre in London, in a revised production by Donald Albery and William Donaldson, it became a sensation, thanks in some part to a favourable review by Kenneth Tynan. There were also a number of musical items in the show, using Dudley Moore's music, most famously an arrangement of the Colonel Bogey March in the style of Beethoven, which Moore appears unable to bring to an end. In 1962 the show transferred to the John Golden Theatre in New York, with its original cast. President John F. Kennedy attended a performance on 10 February 1963. The show continued in New York until 1964. Partnership with Peter Cook When Moore returned to the UK he was offered his own series on the BBC, Not Only... But Also (1965, 1966, 1970). It was commissioned specifically as a vehicle for Moore, but when he invited Peter Cook on as a guest, their comedy partnership was so notable that it became a permanent fixture of the series. Cook and Moore are most remembered for their sketches as two working-class men, Pete and Dud, in macs and cloth caps, commenting on politics and the arts, but they also fashioned a series of one-off characters, usually with Moore in the role of interviewer to one of Cook's upper-class eccentrics. The pair developed an unorthodox method for scripting the material, using a tape recorder to tape an ad-libbed routine that they would then have transcribed and edited. This would not leave enough time to fully rehearse the script, so they often had a set of cue cards. Moore was famous for "corpsing" so, as the programmes often went out live, Cook would deliberately make him laugh in order to get an even bigger reaction from the studio audience. The BBC wiped much of the series, though some of the soundtracks (which were issued on LP record) have survived. In 1968 Cook and Moore briefly switched to ATV for four one-hour programmes entitled Goodbye Again; however, they were not as critically well-received as the BBC shows. On film, Moore and Cook appeared in the 1966 British comedy film The Wrong Box, before co-writing and co-starring in Bedazzled (1967) with Eleanor Bron. Set in Swinging London of the 1960s, Bedazzled was directed by Stanley Donen. The pair closed the decade with appearances in the ensemble caper film Monte Carlo or Bust and Richard Lester's The Bed Sitting Room, based on the play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus. In 1968 and 1969 Moore embarked on two solo comedy ventures, firstly in the film 30 is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia and secondly, on stage, for an Anglicised adaptation of Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam at the Globe Theatre in London's West End. In the 1970s, the relationship between Moore and Cook became increasingly strained as the latter's alcoholism began affecting his work. In 1971, however, Cook and Moore took sketches from Not Only....But Also and Goodbye Again, together with new material, to create the stage revue Behind the Fridge. This show toured Australia and New Zealand in 1971 and ran in London's west end between 1972 and 1973 before transferring to New York City in 1973, re-titled Good Evening. Cook frequently appeared on and off stage inebriated. Nonetheless, the show proved very popular and it won Tony and Grammy Awards. When the Broadway run of Good Evening en.... Discover the Stuart Moore popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Stuart Moore books.