Dudley Moore, 66; Comic Actor, Musician

Dudley Moore, the elfin, Oxford-educated comic actor who used biting wit, physical pratfalls and on-screen vulnerability to tap into the good-natured debauchery of the times in hit films such as “10” and “Arthur,” died Wednesday at his home in Plainfield, N.J., after a long, debilitating illness. He was 66.

The 5-foot, 21/2-inch, British-born funny man died of pneumonia as a complication of progressive supranuclear palsy, according to his publicist in Los Angeles.

Moore had been diagnosed with the degenerative, Parkinson’s-like disease in 1997. The rare brain disorder causes severe problems with walking and balance, and is triggered by the death of cells in a small area of the brain stem. Although the disease is not fatal, sufferers such as Moore are predisposed to develop illnesses such as pneumonia.

In recent months, Moore, a composer and accomplished pianist who early in his career found fame on stage by teaming with the late Peter Cook for a comedy revue called “Beyond the Fringe,” had trouble communicating.

His last public appearance was in November at London’s Buckingham Palace as Queen Elizabeth conferred upon him one of the United Kingdom’s highest honors for entertainment, the insignia of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

But while his mind was ever alert, Moore’s body had been robbed of its vitality.

“He had a very debilitating disease,” said his friend Tony Bill, who had directed the actor in one of his rare dramas, “Six Weeks,” and the comedy “Crazy People.” Bill said Moore’s “mental powers had not been affected,” but he was forced to watch himself “wasting away.”

“That was the tough thing,” said Lou Pitt, Moore’s agent of more than 25 years. “He could receive all the information ... but couldn’t express it.”

Divorced four times, Moore had been living with his friends pianist Rena Fruchter and her husband, Brian Dallow.

During his heyday in the early 1980s, Moore commanded $2 million a picture, an impressive fee in those days. But by 1999, he was forced to sell his beloved house in Marina del Rey.

With his shaggy mane, sly grin and even a pixieish twinkle in his eyes, Moore became an unlikely movie sex symbol.

“He was physically funny and adorable and kind of sexy,” said Rita Rudner, who co-wrote and starred with Moore in his last movie, “Weekend in the Country” in 1996.

It was Blake Edwards who turned Moore into a comic giant by casting him in the hit 1979 film “10.” Moore played a successful composer suffering a midlife crisis who, driving through Beverly Hills one day, spots a perfect vision of beauty on her way to her wedding. He then follows the blond-braided beauty played by Bo Derek to Mexico on her honeymoon.

On Wednesday, Derek said, “He was wonderful to work with, and when he wasn’t making you laugh with his comedy, he was making you cry with his music,” she said. The last time she saw him was at a tribute concert to him last April at Carnegie Hall.

In a statement issued by Edwards and his wife and Moore’s “10” co-star Julie Andrews, they expressed sadness over the passing of the comedian, who they described as a “rare human being who brought warmth and joy to all who knew him.”

Two years after he found international stardom in “10,” Moore received his first and only Oscar nomination for best actor in the blockbuster comedy “Arthur.” He played a rich, lovable lush opposite Liza Minnelli’s stable but poor Italian waitress and Sir John Gielgud in his Oscar-winning role for best supporting actor as his faithful manservant.

Minnelli said in a statement Wednesday that she was deeply saddened by her co-star’s death. “He was a unique individual who was multitalented,” she said. “He could make the world laugh and brought joy to millions.”

But Moore was unable to sustain his box office appeal because of a series of misfires, including “Unfaithfully Yours” and “Blame it on the Bellboy.” And in the early 1990s, he made two unsuccessful attempts at his own TV series, with “Dudley” in 1993 and “Daddy’s Girl” in 1994.

Throughout his film and TV work, however, he never abandoned his musical career, performing as a guest artist with several symphonies, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and developing and co-hosting with conductor Sir Georg Solti the Showtime series “Orchestra!” He even issued a CD of his music titled “Dudley Moore--Live from an Airplane Hangar” in 2000 to raise money for research on his debilitating disease.

Dudley Stuart John Moore was born April 19, 1935, in less than affluence in Dagenham, Essex, England, to a railway engineer father and a Christian Scientist typist mother. Born with a club foot and withered right leg, Moore eventually underwent a series of corrective operations.

Pitt said he doubted Moore ever got over his childhood feelings of inadequacy over his early physical woes, saying they lingered with him like an “albatross” that he kept private for years.

Music freed him, however. At the age of 6, Moore began studying piano and later the violin, harpsichord and organ. After graduating from Dagaenham County High School, he attended Guidhall School of Music and Drama in London and then vaulted over his lowly station by gaining entrance to Magdalen College at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, on an organ scholarship. By the time he left in 1958, he was a composer for local cabarets.

He also was an excellent jazz pianist and recorded an album with the great jazz singer Cleo Laine. In his later years, Moore performed at the Hollywood Bowl, appearing in groups with top jazz players such as bassist Ray Brown.

Fame came in 1961, when Moore teamed on the London stage with three other Oxford graduates--Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett--in the antic but sophisticated musical and comedy revue “Beyond the Fringe.”

The show was an instant hit, playing for four years, first in London and then on Broadway. Afterward, Moore and Cook became a popular team doing a TV series and five movies, including their outrageous 1967 spin on the Faust legend, “Bedazzled,” which featured Raquel Welch as Lust (and remade in 2000 with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley).

They returned to the Broadway stage in the mid-’70s with their award-winning comedy revue “Good Evening,” which featured the famous sketch about an eatery that only served frogs and peaches.

Moore recalled his relationship with Cook as “stormy.”

“We always got along well together when we were alone, but sometimes when other people were around, there was competition,” Moore said in a 1983 interview. “He was bored with my desire to please, and I scorned his relentless and perverse cynicism.”

In 1977, they parted company and Moore headed west to Hollywood to star in the Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase comedy “Foul Play,” in which he played a randy opera conductor.

Moore’s private life was a turbulent series of broken relationships and marriages. His former wives included British actress and model Suzy Kendall, American film star Tuesday Weld, Brogan Lane and Nicole Rothschild.

In 1994, Moore was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse after Rothschild claimed that he struck her. He was investigated but charges were never lodged and they married a month later. They separated in May 1986, reconciled briefly, then in 1997 separated again and eventually divorced.

In the mid-1990s, Moore began to suffer severe memory lapses and was fired from Barbra Streisand’s film “The Mirror Has Two Faces.”

In his last film, “Weekend in the Country,” Rudner said she knew there was something terribly wrong with Moore. “He had problems remembering things and we used to go through scenes over and over.”

On a concert tour of Australia in 1996, Moore was criticized in the media for appearing drunk, staggering and speaking incoherently. The next year, he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic for neurological tests, but while there the doctors found a hole in his heart that required surgery. The doctors then diagnosed him with PSP.

“It’s totally mysterious the way this illness attacks and eats you up and spits you out,” Moore said in a December 2000 interview. “I did get angry, but there’s not much point in being angry. There’s always a feeling, ‘Why did it hit me?’ And I can’t make peace with it because I know I’m going to die from it.”

Arthur Hiller, who directed Moore in the 1983 film “Romantic Comedy,” recalled the last time he saw his friend.

“It was a year or two ago that he came out here [to L.A.] to close things up, and Lou Pitt, his agent, had a Sunday afternoon get-together,” Hiller said. “There were about 40 or 50 of us and we were just saying hi and goodbye. We were happy to see him, but it was so sad to see this warm and talented ... person having difficulty even communicating.”

Moore is survived by two sons, Patrick, by Weld, and Nicholas, by Rothschild; and his sister, Barbara Stevens. Funeral and memorial services were pending.

Donations in Moore’s memory can be made to Music for All Seasons and the Dudley Moore Research Fund for PSP.