Dudley Moore, the gifted comedian who had at least three distinct career phases that brought him great acclaim and success, actually started out as a musical prodigy as a child. He was born in Dagenham, Essex, England, in 1935, to working class parents, Ada Francis (Hughes), an English secretary, and John Havlin Moore, a Scottish railway electrician (originally from Glasgow). Dudley won a music scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study the organ. At university, he also studied composition and became a classically trained pianist, though his forte on the piano for public performance was jazz. After graduating from Magdalen College in 1958, Moore was offered a position as organist at King's College, Cambridge, but turned it down in order to go to London and pursue a music and acting career. Fellow Oxonian Alan Bennett (Exter Colelge, B.A., Medieval History, 1957) had already recommended him to John Bassett, who was putting together a satirical comedy revue called "Beyond The Fringe". "Beyond The Fringe" was to be Moore's first brush with fame, along with co-stars Bennett, future theatrical director Jonathan Miller (now Sir Jonathan, who studied Medicine at Cambridge and was a physician), and Peter Cook, who was destined to become Moore's comic partner during the 1960s and '70s.
