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Actor Tedde Moore was part of a multigenerational clan of creative artists.Courtesy of the Moore-Shebib family
Tedde Moore, who died at age 79 on Aug. 5 in Huntsville, Ont., was a classically trained actor who performed for years at the Stratford Festival and later appeared in movies such as A Christmas Story.
The 1983 film was a modest success on its release but later became a holiday rerun classic. She played Miss Shields, a schoolteacher who gives a student named Ralphie, played by Peter Billingsley, a failing grade for a paper saying he wanted a BB gun for Christmas. She attends to another student, Flick, who got his tongue stuck on a cold flagpole. Ms. Moore was nominated for a Genie for her performance.
She reprised the role of Miss Shields in 1994 in My Summer Story.
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Ms. Moore as Hermia and Christopher Walken as Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1968.Douglas Spillane/Supplied
Dorothea Mavor Moore was born in Toronto on April 11, 1947. She later dropped “Dorothea” for the more manageable “Tedde” (pronounced “Teddy”) at the start of her acting career. Her father was Mavor Moore, an artistic polymath who was everything from drama critic to television producer. Her mother, Darwina (Faessler) Moore, stayed at home to take care of the family. Darwina and Mavor divorced when the children were quite young.
Ms. Moore went to North Toronto Collegiate Institute, but was expelled. “I believe she got into a huge tiff with her teachers because she took a position that there was a homosexual encounter in Othello,” said her son, Noah Shebib. She then went to a boarding school on Prince Edward Island.
Young Tedde started acting around the age of 13. After high school, she landed at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art – known as RADA – one of the best classical theatre schools in the English-speaking world. On graduating in 1967, she won the Principal’s Medal of Honour. Other winners over the years have included such luminaries as Glenda Jackson and Alan Rickman.
Other RADA graduates played coveted roles in films and on the British stage, but Ms. Moore headed home to Canada, where she was an instant star at the Stratford Festival. Early on, she appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Christopher Walken.
She continued to be a mainstay at Stratford.
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Ms. Moore began acting at 13 and eventually graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1967.Douglas Spillane/Supplied
“My mother was Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. She was everything you could be at Stratford for the next four or five seasons,” her son said.
When her first daughter, Zoe, was born she shifted from theatrical work to film and television. In retrospect, her younger daughter Suzanna said, “She should have stayed in the theatre.”
Ms. Moore was part of a multigenerational clan of creative artists stretching back to her grandmother, Dora Mavor Moore, who came to Canada from Scotland as a six-year-old in 1894; she was the first Canadian accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1912. Back in Canada she was one of the founders of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, as it was then known, and an early appointee to the Order of Canada. She was made an officer in 1970 for her contributions to Canada’s theatrical world. She died at 91 in 1979.
Tedde’s father, James Mavor Moore (known as Mavor), started acting on radio when he was 13. He was an intelligence officer during the Second World War and then head of CBC’s International Service in the late 1940s, which was run by External Affairs and was a subtle propaganda service. He moved to CBC Television a couple of years before it went on the air in September of 1952, and started CBC National News. He continued to act, was a drama critic at Maclean’s magazine, taught drama at York University, chaired the Canada Council and was named to the highest level of the Order of Canada. In the middle of all that he played the detective Nero Wolfe on CBC Radio in 1982.
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Ms. Moore appeared in about 50 films and television programs throughout her career.Courtesy of the Moore-Shebib family
The men in Ms. Moore’s romantic life were also famous artists. Fellow actor Patrick Christopher was her partner and the father of her first child, Zoe, born in 1973.
Later, Ms. Moore began a relationship with the filmmaker Don Shebib, who made the groundbreaking 1970 film, Goin’ Down the Road. She had a role in a 2011 sequel, Down the Road Again.
“Tedde was an elegant, sophisticated, friendly person,” said Piers Handling, former director and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival and a close friend of Mr. Shebib’s. He wrote a book called The Films of Don Shebib. “Don could be pricklier and Tedde was the perfect foil. Don’s early films had a working-class flavour. But when they became more middle class, Tedde fitted the part perfectly.”
Along with Down the Road Again, Ms. Moore was in two of Mr. Shebib’s earlier films, Rip Off, in which she played a small role, and Second Wind, in which she was more prominent.
She and Mr. Shebib had two children together, Suzanna and Noah.
“My mother never married anyone, and not my father, though they lived together for decades,” Noah Shebib said. “I was in my mother’s belly when she was shooting A Christmas Story in 1983.”
Noah has continued the family’s creative legacy. A successful music producer known as 40, he helped launch the recording career of the Canadian rapper and singer Drake. “Drake came to my studio to rent recording space for $200 a day. By the fifth day I realized I had taken all his money so we made a decision to work together.” He has won two Grammy Awards (Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song) for his work with Drake. Mr. Shebib was executive producer of almost all of Drake’s albums, more than 100 songs.
His sister Suzanna was a child actor but is now a schoolteacher. His sister Zoe Carter is a writer.
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Ms. Moore, right, with filmmaker Don Shebib.Courtesy of the Moore-Shebib family
Tedde Moore also had experience in the literary world; she co-edited the book Standing Naked in the Wings: Anecdotes from Canadian Actors. It was published in 1997 by Oxford University Press.
In her long acting career, Ms. Moore appeared in about 50 films and television programs. Among other honours, she won a Canadian Film Award in 1976 as best supporting actress for her role in Second Wind.
Ms. Moore had been suffering from multiple sclerosis since 2009. She continued to work and in 2011 she played Mrs. Claus in Mistletoe Over Manhattan, a made-for-TV movie. Her final role in 2017 was also Christmas-themed, in the romance/drama Magical Christmas Ornaments.
Ms. Moore leaves her children, Zoe Carter, Suzanna Shebib, Noah Shebib and Chaunce Drury, along with three sisters and five grandchildren. Don Shebib predeceased her in 2023.
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