CAUSE: It was in late 1996 that Moore began to have a slight problem with a finger that felt to him slightly out of control. Added to this his balance was slightly off and his speech slightly slurred. People assumed he was drunk, which made him angry, since he had never had a drinking problem. He underwent some tests in London, but no conclusions were reached. In March 1997 he returned to New Jersey and began preparations for another round of concerts. In the autumn of 1997, when it seemed that the mystery of his failing health would never be resolved, he went to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for a comprehensive evaluation. This resulted in open heart surgery and a long rehabilitation stay. However, the rehabilitation programmes did not help and a new search for neurological answers began. By the end of 1997, he had been misdiagnosed with a variety of ailments, ranging from strokes to multiple system atrophy, none of them quite explaining his strange and increasing symptoms. Finally, Dr Martin Gizzi, a neurologist at JFK Medical Center in New Jersey, took a look at his slowed eye movements and recognised the familiar symptom of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. The reality began to set in that he was truly on a downhill path. He made his illness public in September 1999, explaining that the condition turned his vision hazy, his speech slurred and his walk impaired. In a television interview, he said: “I am trapped in this body and there is nothing I can do about it.” During the last few weeks of his life, Moore was barely able to speak and finally was unable to walk. He had used a wheelchair outside of the house but with help he continued to walk inside his home until a few days before his death. Moore died at his home in Plainfield, New Jersey, aged 67 of pneumonia, one of the most common complications of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. Dudley Moore was buried during a private hour-long ceremony in Watchung, near Plainfield, on April 2, 2002.
FURTHER READING: Dudley Moore– Douglas Thompson (London: Little, Brown, 1996); The Authorised Biography Of Dudley Moore– Barbara Paskin (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1997).
Agnes Moorehead
Born December 6, 1900
Died April 30, 1974
Sterling support star. If you were able to choose in which film to make your début then you could do worse than to choose a controversial and successful film such as Citizen Kane (1941). That’s what the redheaded Moorehead did. Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (she claimed to believe every word in the Bible) and a mother who outlived her, Agnes Robertson Moorehead was educated at Muskingum College (where she obtained a BA), the University of Wisconsin (where she took an MA in English and public speaking) and the American Academy of Dramatic Art. She later taught speech and drama to schoolchildren, using the long holidays to brush up her own technique, albeit having made her professional début in 1917 with the St Louis, Missouri, Municipal Opera Company. In 1929 she made her first appearance in New York and then began appearing on the radio in various shows. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater Company and the following year she was cast in the role of Mrs Mary Kane, the mother of the citizen of the title. It was for her portrayal of Fanny Minafer in Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) that she won the first of her four Academy Award nominations. Her subsequent films included: The Big Street (1942) as Violette, The Youngest Profession (1943) as Miss Featherstone, Government Girl as Mrs Wright, Jane Eyre as Mrs Reed, Dragon Seed (1944), Since You Went Away (1944) as Emily Hawkins, Mrs Parkington (1944) as Aspasia Conti, for which she won her second Oscar nomination, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) as Bruna Jacobson, Keep Your Powder Dry (1945) as Lieutenant-Colonel Spottiswoode, Dark Passage (1947) as Madge Rapf, The Woman In White (1948) as Countess Fosco, Johnny Belinda (1948) as Aggie McDonald and her third Oscar nod, Station West (1948) as Mrs Caslon, Summer Holiday (1948) as Cousin Lily, Caged (1950) as Ruth Benton, Black Jack (1950) as Mrs Birk, Without Honor (1950) as Katherine Williams, Fourteen Hours (1951) as Christine Hill Cosick, Show Boat (1951) as Parthy Hawks, Main Street To Broadway (1953) as Mildred Waterbury, Magnificent Obsession (1954) as Nancy Ashford, All That Heaven Allows (1955) as Sara Warren, Meet Me In Las Vegas (1956) as Miss Hattie, Pardners (1956) as Matilda Kingsley, The True Story Of Jesse James (1957) as Mrs Samuel, The Story Of Mankind (1957) as Queen Elizabeth, Jeanne Eagels (1957) as Madame Neilson, Raintree County (1957) as Ellen Shawnessy, Pollyanna (1960) as Mrs Snow, How The West Was Won (1962) as Rebecca Prescott and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) as the sarcastic housekeeper Velma Cruther, for which she received her fourth and final Oscar nomination. That same year she was cast as the witch Endora in the hit sitcom Bewitched. A closeted lesbian (actor Paul Lynde described her as “classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes”), Moorehead was the lover and mentor of a well-known Hollywood actress who went on to marry three times and is forever linked (though not by an affair) with Elizabeth Taylor. Moorehead married twice. When she caught her first husband, John Griffith Lee (June 5, 1930–June 11, 1952), in bed with a woman she shouted at him that if he could have mistresses, so could she. Her second marriage, to Robert Gist, lasted for five years from 1953 until March 12, 1958.
CAUSE: Agnes Moorehead died aged 73 in Rochester, Minnesota, of lung cancer. She was just one of many including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Lee Van Cleef and Pedro Armendariz who contracted cancer after working on The Conqueror (1956).
Kenneth More
Born September 20, 1914
Died July 12, 1982
The poor man’s David Niven. Kenneth Gilbert More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. After a brief stint working in Sainsbury’s, he went to Canada where he worked as a fur trapper before being deported. One of his earliest jobs in the theatre was as a stagehand at the infamous Windmill Theatre, the only London venue to allow nudity on stage, albeit in ‘tableaux’ (i.e. the performers were not allowed to move). His first task was to rush on stage at the end of each scene during the blackout and hand the girls their dressing gowns, because the Lord Chamberlain’s dictum forbade any of them to move if their breasts were bare. On Boat Race nights Hooray Henrys from Oxbridge would invade the theatre determined to make the girls move by putting sneezing powder or chewing gum or pellets in a pea shooter and aiming at the performers. Obviously, when they sneezed their breasts wobbled, to the absolute delight of the audience. When he was promoted to assistant stage manager one of More’s more unpleasant tasks was to keep an eye out for men pleasuring themselves. If he saw anything untoward he would alert the commissionaire with the words: “A4 Wanker, Times, C17 Daily Mail,” depending on the seat number and the newspaper that the guilty party was using to cover his furtive activities. The commissionaire would then tell the culprit that the manager wished to see them and they left, no doubt red faced. In 1936 More made his stage début at the Windmill when Eric Woodburn, many years later to make a name for himself as Dr Snoddie in Dr Finlay’s Casebook, twisted his ankle and was unable to perform. Unfortunately, Woodburn’s was the one part More hadn’t learned and he was unable to sing his song either. The audience, not sure if it was a comedy or drama, howled their appreciation and that was the incident that made More decide to become an actor. He appeared in bit parts in a number of films, including Carry On London (1937) before the outbreak of war. He failed to get into the RAF because he hadn’t passed the School Certificate and failed the medical. Instead he became a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. In 1940 he married Beryl Johnstone (d. 1969) but it wasn’t a match made in heaven and they divorced, though not before the birth of a daughter, Susan Jane. Following the end of the war he was cast in School For Secrets (1946). Spotted by Noël Coward, the Master cast him as George Bourne in his play Peace In Our Time in July 1948. Coward also had desires to cast More elsewhere. However, he was rebuffed. “Oh, Mr Coward, sir! I could never have an affair with you, because – because – you remind me of my father! ” More once told his admirer. Coward approached the object of his lust, ruffled his hair and said, “Hello, son.” The two men subsequently became friends and whenever Coward saw him would always call him “Son” as
a private joke. More went on to appear in Scott Of The Antarctic (1948) as Lieutenant Teddy Evans, Man On The Run (1948) as Newman, Now Barabbas as Spencer, Chance Of A Lifetime as Adam, No Highway (1951) as Dobson, Brandy For The Parson (1952) as Tony Rackham and The Yellow Balloon (1953) as Ted Palmer but it was playing Ambrose Claverhouse in Genevieve (1953), for which he was paid £2,500, that made him a star. In 1952 he married for the second time. His wife was Mabel Edith Barkby known as ‘Bill’ and he had a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth (b. King’s College Hospital, London, 1954), by her. He had his biggest cinematic successes in the Fifties with films such as Doctor In The House (1954) as Richard Grimsdyke, for which he won a Best Actor BAFTA, Our Girl Friday (1954) as Pat Plunkett, The Deep Blue Sea (1955) as Freddie Page, Reach For The Sky (1956) as legless war hero Douglas Bader, The Admirable Crichton (1957) as William Crichton, The Sheriff Of Fractured Jaw as Jonathan Tibbs playing opposite Jayne Mansfield, A Night To Remember (1958) as Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller in a story about the Titanic, North West Frontier as Captain Scott and The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959) as Richard Hannay. In the Sixties he was lauded for playing Jolyon Forsyte in a BBC adaption of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga. He was paid £15,500 to play the part. More’s film work gradually began to dry up, although he played cameo roles in a few biggies and some larger parts, viz. Sink The Bismarck! (1960) as Captain Jonathan Shepard, The Longest Day (1962) as Captain Colin Maud, Battle Of Britain (1969) as Group Captain Baker, Oh! What A Lovely War (1969) as Kaiser Wilhelm II and Scrooge (1970) playing the Ghost of Christmas Present. From 1974 onwards he played the inquisitive Father Brown in the ATV television series of the same name. It was to be his last major role. On March 17, 1961, he met the beautiful, blonde, Irish, Catholic actress Angela McDonagh Douglas (b. October 29, 1940) while appearing in The Greengage Summer. They married in Kensington Congregational Church on St Patrick’s Day, 1968 with Roger Moore as the best man.
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