Tribute to Terry Moore

Here’s an extraordinary fact: the screen career of Terry Moore (Helen Luella Koford, b. 1929) which began in 1940, remains technically open ended. Moore’s professional credits stretch out over 84 years, which may indeed be a record.

Born into a Southern California Mormon family, Moore started out as a child actress. Notable early films included A-Haunting We Will Go (1942) with Laurel and Hardy, My Gal Sal (1942) in which she played Carrie Dreiser, and Gaslight (1944) in which she played the younger incarnation of Ingrid Bergman’s character. In adulthood, she had key roles in numerous films that we’ve written about here, warranting this special attention. She had leads or central roles in the original version of Mighty Joe Young (1949), The Great Rupert (1950) with Jimmy Durante, Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) which earned her an Oscar nom, Man on a Tightrope (1955), Daddy Long Legs (1955) with Fred Astaire, Peyton Place (1956), Waco (1966), and Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976). She was a regular on the western TV series Empire (1962-63) and played a villainess named Venus in three episodes of Batman.

After Howard Hughes died in 1976, the five-times married Moore made headlines by claiming that he had married her on his yacht in 1949 (the boat captain performing the ceremony), and then destroyed the records. She also claimed they had an affair lasting eight years, and that he was a bit of a brute in and out of the sack. The Hughes estate settled six figures on her out of court about a decade later. Her memoir about their affair The Beauty and the Billionaire came out in 1984.

As we said, Moore never retired. She has over 100 screen credits, though many of the later ones are for television guest shots or bit parts in low budget films. Some notable later things include Going Overboard (Adam Sandler’s first movie, 1989), Beverly Hills Brats (1989), and Final Voyage (1999). She was in a 2014 episode of True Detective! Her most recent acting credit is the title role in Silent Life: The Story of the Lady in Black (2023), about a mysterious woman who claims to have been a lover of Valentino. The film also features Twin Peaks’Sherilynn Fenn as Nazimova, Franco Nero as the Ghost of Valentino, as well as Isabella Rossellini, and Monte Markham. Her more recent credits have consisted of interviews for documentaries and television.

Keep going, Terry! Only five more years!