Dickie Moore (actor)

 

Moore with Spencer Tracy in Disorderly Conduct (1932)

 

Dickie Moore in 1932

John Richard Moore Jr. was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Nora Eileen (née Orr) and John Richard Moore, a banker.^[1] His mother was Irish, and his paternal grandparents were from England and Ireland, respectively.^[2][3]

He made his film debut in 1927 in the silent film The Beloved Rogue, where he portrayed silent film star John Barrymore's character as a one-year-old baby. He soon gained notable supporting roles. He appeared as Marlene Dietrich's son in Josef von Sternberg's drama Blonde Venus (1932). He also appeared with Barbara Stanwyck in So Big (1932), with Walter Huston in Gabriel Over the White House (1933) and with Spencer Tracy in Man's Castle (1933).

In the 1932–33 season Moore appeared in eight films of the Our Gang series, as the leader of the gang. He left the series after one year to play in more feature films. He is perhaps most remembered for his portrayal of the title character in the 1933 adaptation of Oliver Twist.

In 1935, he played Joseph Meister in The Story of Louis Pasteur. In 1941, he portrayed the brother of Gary Cooper in the war drama Sergeant York under the direction of Howard Hawks. He is also famous for giving Shirley Temple her first romantic onscreen kiss, in the film Miss Annie Rooney.

Moore served in the United States Army during World War II. Later, he was less successful as a teenage actor and young adult and he often had to play in B-movies such as Dangerous Years. One of his last notable film roles was in Out of the Past (1947), in which he portrayed Robert Mitchum's deaf young assistant, "The Kid". His last role was a young soldier in Eight Iron Men (1952).

He later performed on Broadway, in stock and on television. He went on to teach and write books about acting, edit Equity News, and produce industrial films and a short film The Boy and the Eagle, which was nominated for an Oscar. He retired from acting in the late 1950s.^[4]

Moore was married three times. His first marriage was to Pat Dempsey from 1948 to 1954. The couple had one child, Kevin Moore.^[5] In 1959 he married Eleanor Donhowe Fitzpatrick; they divorced in 1978. His third and final marriage was in 1988 to Jane Powell, to whom he remained married until his death in 2015. The two met when Moore interviewed Powell for Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, which he had just published.^[6] The couple lived in Manhattan and Wilton, Connecticut.^[7]

 

In 1984, Moore published Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But Don't Have Sex or Take the Car), a book about his and others' experiences as child actors.^[8] In 1966, after battling addiction to alcohol and drugs, he founded a public relations firm, Dick Moore and Associates, which he ran until 2010.^[9]

In March 2013, Moore's wife reported that he had arthritis and "bouts of dementia".^[10] He died at a hospice in Wilton, Connecticut on September 7, 2015, five days before his 90th birthday.^[11][12] He was cremated.^[13]

• Best, Marc. Those Endearing Young Charms: Child Performers of the Screen (South Brunswick and New York: Barnes & Co., 1971), pp. 197–202.
• Dye, David. Child and Youth Actors: Filmography of Their Entire Careers, 1914–1985. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1988, pp. 162–163.
• Holmstrom, John. The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, pp. 139–140.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dickie Moore (actor).

• Dickie Moore at IMDb  
• Dickie Moore at the TCM Movie Database
• Dickie Moore at the Internet Broadway Database  
• Photographs and literature
• "Fun with Dick and Jane" article w/photos