In the Spotlight:
CLIFTON WEBB
The distinguished , pompous actor was born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in a rural part of Marion County, Indiana on November 19, 1889.
His parents were Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, the son of a grocer and Maybelle A. Parmelee, the daughter of a railroad conductor.
In 1892, Webb's formidable mother, Maybelle, moved to New York with her beloved "little Webb", as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about her husband Jacob, a ticket clerk who, by saying, "We never speak of him. He didn't care for the theater."
Privately tutored, Webb started taking dance and acting lessons at the age of five. He made his stage debut at seven in the impressive setting of Carnegie Hall by performing with the New York Children's Theater.
This success was followed by a vaudeville tour and succeeded by leading roles as "Oliver Twist" and Tom Sawyer in "Huckleberry Finn".
A dapper Clifton Webb, Broadway stage actor and dancer
By the age of nineteen, Webb had become a professional ballroom dancer and, taking the stage name "Clifton Webb", sang and danced in about two dozen operettas before debuting on Broadway.
The 1920s saw Clifton Webb in no less than eight Broadway shows, numerous other stage appearances, including vaudeville, and a handful of silent films.
It was Clifton Webb who first introduced Irving Berlin's classic song
"Easter Parade" on the Broadway stage
In 1925, Webb appeared on stage in a dance act with vaudeville star and silent film actress Mary Hay. Later that year, when she and her husband, actor Richard Barthelmess, decided to produce and star in their own film vehicle "New Toys", they chose Webb to be second lead. The movie proved to be financially successful, but 19 more years would pass before Webb appeared in another feature film.
Webb's mainstay was the Broadway theatre. Between 1913 and 1947, the tall and slender performer who sang in a clear, gentle tenor, appeared in 23 Broadway shows.
Most of Webb's Broadway shows were musicals, but he also starred in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest", and his longtime friend Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" and "Present Laughter", in parts that Coward wrote with Webb in mind.
After "New Toys" and another 1925 silent "The Heart of a Siren", he was classified as a character actor and stereotyped as a fussy, effete snob.
Webb was in his mid-fifties when actor/director Otto Preminger chose him over the objections of 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck to play the classy, but evil, radio columnist Waldo Lydecker, who is obsessed with Gene Tierney's character in the 1944 film noir "Laura".
His performance was showered with acclaim and made him an unlikely movie star.
Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Gene Tierney, & Webb in "Laura" (1944)
Mark Stevens & Clifton Webb in film-noir "The Dark Corner" (1946)
Despite Zanuck's original objection, Webb was immediately signed to a long-term contract with Fox. Two years later he was reunited with Tierney in another highly praised role as the elitist Elliott Templeton in "The Razor's Edge". He received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for both films.
Gene Tierney, Tyrone Power, Herbert Marshall, Webb, Anne Baxter & Lucile Watson in "The Razor's Edge". Webb won a Golden Globe Award as Elliott Templeton
Webb received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for "Sitting Pretty", the first in a three-film series of comedic "Mr. Belvedere" features with Webb portraying the snide and omniscient central character.
Webb as Mr. Belvedere with Raymond C. Hair Jr. in "Sitting Pretty" (1948).Webb received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for this role.
In 1950's film "Cheaper by the Dozen", Webb and Myrna Loy played Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, real-life efficiency experts of the 1910s and 1920s, and the parents of 12 children. The film's success led to a sequel, "Belles on Their Toes", without Webb.
Webb's other movie roles include "The Dark Corner", "For Heaven's Sake", "Elopement", "Dreamboat", "Stars and Stripes Forever" a biography of bandmaster John Philip Sousa.
In 1953 he had his most dramatic role as the doomed husband of unfaithful Barbara Stanwyck in "Titanic", followed by "Mister Scoutmaster", "Three Coins in the Fountain", "Woman's World", "The Man Who Never Was", "Boy on a Dolphin", second-billed to Alan Ladd, with third-billed Sophia Loren, "The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker", and "Holiday for Lovers".
With Jane Wyman in "Holiday for Lovers"
Webb's elegant taste kept him on Hollywood's best-dressed lists for decades. Even though he exhibited comically foppish mannerisms in portraying Mr. Belvedere and other movie characters, his scrupulous private life kept him free of scandal.
Bogart on Webb's lap next to Laurence Olivier at one of Webb's shindigs
Webb was a friend and Broadway co-star of lesbian singer Libby Holman. Webb and his mother used to take frequent vacations with Holman, and they would remain friends until the mid-1940s.
In fact, the character of Lynn Belvedere is said to have been very close to his real life—he had an almost Oedipal-like extreme devotion to his mother Maybelle, who was his companion and who lived with him until her death at age 91. Although he was gay, he might be better defined as asexual, given that the object of his love and tenderness was his mother.
The couple were inseparable, and often held gatherings at their home, often attended by the top stars of Hollywood.
After Maybelle's death Webb's mourning for his mother continued for a year with no signs of letting up and in a fit of comic exasperation Noel Coward is said to have finally told Webb, "It must be difficult to be orphaned at 70, Clifton."
But the twilight had arrived for Webb's life and career. Inconsolable in his grief, he completed a final role as an initially sarcastic, but ultimately self-sacrificing Catholic priest in Leo McCarey's "Satan Never Sleeps".
Webb spent the remaining five years of his life as an ill recluse at his home in Beverly Hills, California, succumbing to a heart attack on October 13, 1966 at the age of 76. He is interred at the Abbey of the Psalms in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Clifton Webb has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.
The part that got away: Ayn Rand wanted him to play suave villain Ellsworth Toohey in the 1949 adaptation of "The Fountainhead" and indeed it would have been superb casting (and might have significantly improved a flawed film), but studio chiefs vetoed this idea.