Moore Marriott, who once had dark, curly hair, made his first
appearance on stage aged five as a boy dancer. His father had his own theatre company and
the young Marriott made many appearances with it as a boy. He made his first film when the
British cinema was still in its infancy. Supposedly, he made many early silents for the
Hepworth company, although no records exist of these appearances, Marriott himself thought
that he had made nearly 300 films.
Certainly from 1920 he began to be billed in the credits of movies,
often in sullen, bucolic roles. He had become quite popular by the late
1920s and played one or two leading roles. With the coming of sound,
however, Marriott moved quickly into character roles, often playing
garrulous, toothless, wispy-haired old codgers 20 or 30 years older
than he really was. Graham Moffatt joined Marriott
in the Will Hay comedy, Windbag
the Sailor, Marriott playing the cunning, eager old Jeremiah Harbottle.
The trio was back together again in their most famous film Oh,
Mr Porter! Hay is a stationmaster demoted to a dilapidated Irish
halt for past misdemeanours. Inevitably he finds the staff consists
of Moffatt and Marriott.
Public response to the trio's subsequent misadventures was such that
they were teamed up once more in Convict
99, a film stolen by Marriott as Jerry the Mole, a prisoner forever
trying to dig his way out. Displeased with such scene-stealing, Hay
went back to filming on his own for one film, but studio pressure resulted
in Moffatt and Marriott re-joining him for Old
Bones of the River, Ask
a Policeman? and
Where's That Fire?. Marriott also supported the Crazy Gang in Gasbags
and The Frozen Limits, and he and Moffatt were reunited, along with
another popular duo, Basil Radford and Naunton
Wayne in the appropriately tided wartime winner Millions
Like Us. After that the old codger went his separate way, but not
to a long life, Marriott was dead at 64.
