Little Dudley Happy at Last
Lewis Grossberger
The worst Six Weeks – and the worst years – of Dudley Moore's life are now over
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Rolling Stone
The sketch takes on a certain metaphoric resonance when one learns of Dudley’s early foot troubles and realizes that in a sense –– with whimsical little Dud being hailed as a Hollywood sex symbol –– the one-legged man has, by God, become Tarzan.

5 Getting Better

DUDLEY FRANKLY ADMITS HE IS A HETEROSEXUAL. He’s been married and divorced twice: to Suzy Kendall, the British actress (1966 to 1968) and to Tuesday Weld (1975 to 1980). He has a son, Patrick, who’s seven and lives in New York with Tuesday Weld. Dudley keeps a room set aside for him in the Marina del Rey house, which he and Weld bought about five years ago, after they’d washed ashore in L.A. at the terminus of the U.S. tour of Good Evening. (It was at that point, following a year of sunny torpor, that Dudley decided to take a serious shot at Hollywood.)

In the pre-Anton era, Dudley was a forceful advocate of promiscuity, pioneering the concept he calls “the meaningful one-night stand.” He met the singer-actress three years ago at an obscure awards ceremony; they’ve been virtual roommates since, though in their two separate houses. They accompany each other to work engagements, sometimes as far off as Japan. They seem genuinely affectionate. They have stocked a large repertoire of height jokes with which to respond to the seemingly endless public fascination with their height disparity of approximately eight inches.

Driving to Fox studios for a meeting on his next movie (Unfaithfully Yours, a remake of a 1948 Preston Sturges comedy starring Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell), Dudley is found at the wheel of his white ’63 Bentley, with Susan seated to his left. Brilliantly, if lazily, the Dudleywatcher hits on the device of asking her to interview him about them. As a typical reporter might.

SUSAN: “How do you feel about dating a taller woman?”

DUDLEY: [Adopting American accent] “Oh, it’s great, really great. You know, like Susan and I really, like, confronted this height thing with a degree of maturity unknown on the western seaboard….”

SUSAN: [Cutting him off] “Aha. Well, that’s all I wanted to ask you. Basically, you’re a pretty boring guy.”

DUDLEY: [Still orating] “…that is the linchpin on which everything else….”

SUSAN: “What is it you like best about me [laughs wickedly]?”

DUDLEY: “That’s a tough one, Susan.”

SUSAN: “I know – there’s so much to choose from!”

DUDLEY: [Serious now] “Well, I was saying before, I love your passion….”

SUSAN: “Ahh, that’s sweet.”

DUDLEY: “Your enthusiasm and your sense of humor.”

SUSAN: “And I do make good coffee in the morning, right?”

DUDLEY: “Good coffee. You haven’t read much Proust, but then….”

REPORTER: “But then, who has?”

SUSAN: “Let me ask you, Dudley. What do you find most attractive about yourself?”

DUDLEY: [Lapsing back into American accent] “Well, my whole karma, man.”

SUSAN: “I’m serious.”

DUDLEY: “What do I…? This is an unanswerable question. In the sense that I’m too embarrassed.”

SUSAN: “I can answer it.”

DUDLEY: [Reluctantly] “I find my desire to be loved the most attractive part of myself.”

SUSAN: “I have to agree with that. It’s very frustrating and not altogether what I like best about him, because everybody does, in turn, love him. Men, women, everybody. But I think that is because he’s so tangible. He really is very … touchable, aren’t you, dear?”

Another car veers dangerously close to Dudley’s. He verbalizes unrepressed anger.

REPORTER: “Right there, someone wants to touch you.”

SUSAN: “And if they can’t touch him, they just kind of run the car into him.”

DUDLEY: [Mock angry] “Well, this bitch is trying to pretend that nobody wants to touch her!”

SUSAN: “Oh, but I’ve realized it.”

DUDLEY: [Sneering] “Yeahhh. Realized it. For the last month.”

SUSAN: “No, it’s funny, but the best thing Dudley’s introduced me to in my life is….”

DUDLEY: “Promiscuity.”

SUSAN: “Not promiscuity so much, but the fact that promiscuity is not a dirty word. That it doesn’t make you bad or evil.”

DUDLEY: “There are no dirty words. Except not enough salt.”

SUSAN: “You use a few. I haven’t had enough chocolate today’ – that’s Dudley. There’s no chocolate in the house and he wants it, that’s trouble. Let’s see. We were talking about interviewing the other day….I was talking to you about it, wasn’t I?”

DUDLEY: “Either me or Burt Reynolds, I don’t know.”

SUSAN: “Oh, was it Burt? No, it was you. Because we all have a lot of pain in our lives; I know where a lot of your pain comes from. But what do you feel is the biggest source of pain in your life? Not something in the past, but like a continual well you go to that’s painful.”

REPORTER: “Interviews.”

SUSAN: “He loves interviews.”

DUDLEY: “Uhh, well, you see this is the old philosophical paradox. You can say you’re not always doing what you want to do, but actually you are every moment. That is a great source of pain to me. The fear of doing what I want to do and the potential of being rejected and abandoned. That’s life.”

SUSAN: “How do you feel about smog?”

DUDLEY: “I feel smog abandons me from time to time, and I feel very upset about that.”