Dudley Malone: Supporting Character in Two Musicals

Dudley Field Malone who appears
in Suffs and whom I played
in an Off-Off-Bway musical

In April of 2022, at the end of a marathon of theatergoing to catch up with all the shows opening before the cut-off before Tony and Drama Desk eligibility, I was watching Shaina Taub's musical Suffs at the Public Theater. This inventive historical pageant follows the sweeping story of the Women's Suffrage Movement of the early 20th century. All of the many roles, both male and female, are played by an all-woman cast. One of the male roles was that of Dudley Malone, President Woodrow Wilson's Chief of Staff, who resigns in protest over Wilson's opposition to the women's cause and eventually marries Doris Stevens, one of the leaders of the movement. Taub has rewritten and revised the show and now it has just opened on Broadway in another crowded season. I loved it even more this time and hope it survives the Tony nominations.

As I watching this supporting character,  I remembered where I had heard the name before. Malone later served as co-counsel to Clarence Darrow in the Scopes Monkey trial, defending Tennessee school teacher John T. Scopes for daring to teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in the Bible Belt state. Ironically, Malone was also a character in an obscure musical based on that trial, called--wait for it--Sodom and Gorilla (get it?) And I played that role in an Off-Off-Broadway production.

Tsilala Brock as Dudley Malone and 
Grace McLean as President Woodrow Wilson
in Suffs.
Credit: Joan Marcus

He later specialized in international divorce cases and established an office in Paris. After declaring bankruptcy in 1935, he moved to Hollywood, serving as legal consultant to 20th Century Fox and even appearing in a few films. His resemblance to Winston Churchill got him cast as the British Prime Minister in Mission to Moscow (1943). He is listed on imdb.com as making an unbilled appearance as Churchill in An American in Paris, but I don't remember it. I have to look at the film again. After divorcing Stevens in 1929 in Paris, he married actress Edna Louise Johnson in London in 1930. He died in 1950 in Los Angeles.

Dudley Malone as Winston
Churchill with unbilled
actor as Stalin in
Mission to Moscow