19 hours ago
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Film preservationists unearthed a long-lost TV performance by 1980s film star Dudley Moore — in the days before he became a household name and fronted a jazz trio.
The group Film is Fabulous! said it recovered the black-and-white clip of The Dudley Moore Trio from 1967 jamming on the BBC program “This is Petula Clark” as it catalogued two private collections.
The broadcast, which aired Dec. 19, 1967, is one of dozens of BBC variety and music programs believed lost forever after the network’s infamous tape-wiping purges of the 1960s and 1970s.
The BBC and other broadcasters would erase and record over their tapes in an effort to save cash in an era before reruns were commonplace in the UK.
Huge swaths of British TV history are now missing.
Moore is best remembered stateside for Hollywood hits like “10” and “Arthur,” which earned him an Oscar nod for Best Actor. But before that, he was a serious Oxford-trained and classically schooled jazz musician.
He led his own trio and built a reputation as a skilled pianist and composer well before comedy made him a household name.
Surviving fragments like this one have been turning up more and more through private movie collections, dusty attics and even forgotten film cans that have coughed up missing episodes before.
English (US)