DUDLEY MOORE DEAD AT 66:

DUDLEY MOORE DEAD AT 66: The Washington Post is reporting that Dudley Moore, “who became an unlikely Hollywood heart-throb portraying a cuddly pipsqueak whose charm melted hearts in “10” and “Arthur,” died Wednesday at his home in New Jersey, a spokeswoman said. He was 66.”

Moore died at 11 a.m. EST, said publicist Michelle Bega in Los Angeles. The British-born actor died of pneumonia as a complication of progressive supranuclear palsy, she said.

There was more than a touch of autobiography in “10,” the 1979 film in which Moore played a musician determined to marry a perfect woman. But the happy ending eluded him in real life. Four marriages ended in divorce.

He confessed to being driven by feelings of inferiority about his working-class origins in Dagenham, east London, and because of his height of five feet, 2 1/2 inches. In later life he also spoke of the pain of being rejected by his mother because he was born with a deformed left foot.

Moore starred in one of my favorite guilty pleasure films–“Bedazzled”, a kooky British psychedelic takeoff on Faust, co-starring Moore’s frequent sidekick, Peter Cook (recently remade into a surprisingly watchable, if far less silly version with Elizabeth Hurley).