Dudley Moore (born April 19, 1935, Dagenham, Essex, England—died March 27, 2002, Plainfield, New Jersey, U.S.) British actor, comedian, and musician whose career ranges from jazz and classical musician and composer to satiric comedian to Hollywood movie stars.
Moore attended Magdalen College, Oxford, on a music scholarship, earned bachelor’s degrees in 1957 and 1958, and then toured as a jazz pianist. In 1960 Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Alan Bennett created the satiric revue Beyond the Fringe for the Edinburgh Festival. The show thereafter was performed in London and on Broadway, where it won its creators a special Tony Award in 1963. Cook and Moore then teamed up for the television sketch comedy series Not Only…But Also (1965–66; 1970); the films The Wrong Box (1966), Bedazzled (1967), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1977); three “Derek and Clive” comedy record albums in the 1970s; and, beginning in 1971, a follow-up to Beyond the Fringe. At first called Behind the Fridge, it toured Australia before being presented in London and then, retitled Good Evening, in the United States, where it won Cook and Moore a special Tony Award in 1974. Moore also composed film scores, including those for Bedazzled and Inadmissible Evidence (1968), and starred on the London stage in the comedy Play It Again, Sam (1969).
