Biography
Mark Stevens and Clifton Webb in The Dark Corner
Clifton Webb (November 19, 1889 – October 13, 1966) was an American actor.
He was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck in Beech Grove, Indiana (a self-governing part of Indianapolis), the son of Jacob Grant Hollenbeck (1867-May 2, 1939) and Mabelle A. Parmalee (some sources give "Parmelee") (March 24, 1869 — October 17, 1960).
In 1892, his formidable mother, Mabelle, moved to New York with her beloved "little Webb," as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about his father, a ticket clerk for the Indianapolis-St. Louis Railroad, by saying, "We never speak of him. He didn't care for the theatre."
Privately tutored, Webb also studied dance and acting. He made his stage debut at age seven. He sang with the Boston-based Aborn Opera Company when he was seventeen.
Taking the stage name Clifton Webb, he was a professional ballroom dancer at age nineteen and appeared in about two dozen operettas before debuting on Broadway as Bosco in The Purple Road (1913). He also appeared on stage in a dance act with Mary Hay in 1925.
Over the next twenty-five years, the tall and slender performer, who sang in a clear, gentle tenor, appeared in numerous musicals and worked his way from featured dancer to leading man.
Webb introduced Irving Berlin's Easter Parade on Broadway, as well as George and Ira Gershwin's "I've Got a Crush on You" in Treasure Girl (1928); Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" in The Little Show (1929); and Irving Berlin's "Not for All the Rice in China" in As Thousands Cheer (1933).
He was a friend and Broadway co-star of the lesbian singer, Libby Holman, with whom Webb and his mother used to take frequent vacations and would remain friends until the mid-1940s.
Despite his impressive Broadway credentials, and some appearances on the London stage, he did not fare as well in Hollywood. After a few silent films, he was classified as a character actor and stereotyped as a fussy effete snob. Mother Mabelle also preferred New York to Hollywood with its "yes men".
His first major motion picture roles came in his middle-age as the classy but villainous radio columnist, Waldo Lydecker, who is obsessed with Gene Tierney's character in the film noir Laura (1944) and as the elitist Elliott Templeton in The Razor's Edge (1946).
Webb received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1945 for Laura and in 1947 for The Razor's Edge.
He received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty.
He also played the priggish title role in a series of comedic "Mr. Belvedere" features, beginning with Sitting Pretty (1948).
He played the husband of Myrna Loy and father of twelve children in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), which was an anti-contraception screed and propaganda tool of the Roman Catholic church which controlled movie censorship in those days. Mildred Natwick, who played a member of a Planned Parenthood-like organization is made to appear as a child-hater, rather than a supporter of birth control, as anyone who has seen the movie can attest.
Webb also appeared as silent movie star, Bruce Blair, nicknamed "Dreamboat", turned college professor Thornton Sayre, who wants to stop a recent revival of his movies on television, in Dreamboat (1952); as John Philip Sousa in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952); as the doomed husband of Barbara Stanwyck in the 1953 film Titanic; and as (fictional) novelist John Frederick Shadwell in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).
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.
In fact, the character of Lynn Belvedere is said to have been very close to his real life – he had an almost Oedipus-like extreme devotion to his mother, who was his companion and who lived with him until her death at age ninety-one. Although he admitted to being gay, he was actually more asexual, given that the object of his love and tenderness was his mother, Mabelle.
When Webb's mourning for his mother continued for what seemed a prolonged period of time, his longtime friend, Noel Coward, is said to have remarked with a bit of exasperation, "It must be tough to be orphaned at 71".
Ironically, the character of Belvedere was reborn as an all-knowing male housekeeper on ABC American television, with another gay actor, Christopher Hewett, playing the role, this time and Bob Uecker playing his boss.
Inconsolable in his grief, he completed a final film Satan Never Sleeps, which was set in China during the Communist takeover, but was actually filmed in England during 1961, using sets from the 1958 film, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, which had the same milieu.
He spent the remaining five years of his life as an ill recluse at his home in Beverly Hills, California, succumbing to a heart attack, aged 76.
He is interred in crypt 2350, corridor G-6, Abbey of the Psalms in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood.
Clifton Webb has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard.
Filmography
Polly with a Past (1920) (Metro Pictures) ... Harry Richardson (uncredited)
Let Not Man Put Asunder (1924) (Vitagraph) ... Major Bertie (uncredited)
New Toys (1925) (First National Pictures) ... Tom Lawrence
The Heart of a Siren (1925) (First National Pictures) ... Maxim
The Still Alarm (1930) comedy short of Broadway skit (Vitaphone) ... Business man sharing a room in burning hotel
Laura (1944) (20th Century Fox) ... Waldo Lydecker
The Dark Corner (1946) (20th Century Fox) ... Hardy Cathcart
The Razor's Edge (1946) (20th Century Fox) ... Elliott Templeton
Sitting Pretty (1948) (20th Century Fox) ... Lynn Belvedere
Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) (20th Century Fox) ... Lynn Belvedere
Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) (20th Century Fox) ... Frank Bunker Gilbreth
For Heaven's Sake (1950) (20th Century Fox) ... Charles/Slim Charles
Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951) (20th Century Fox) ... Lynn Belvedere
Elopement (1951) (20th Century Fox) ... Howard Osborne
Dreamboat (1952) (20th Century Fox) ... Prof. Thornton Sayre/Dreamboat/Bruce Blair
Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) (20th Century Fox) ... John Philip Sousa
Titanic (1953) (20th Century Fox) ... Richard Ward Sturges
Mister Scoutmaster (1953) (20th Century Fox) ... Robert Jordan
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) (20th Century Fox) ... John Frederick Shadwell
Woman's World (1954) (20th Century Fox) ... Ernest Gifford
The Man Who Never Was (1956) (20th Century Fox) ... Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu
Boy on a Dolphin (1957) (20th Century Fox) ... Victor Parmalee
The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959) (20th Century Fox) ... Mr. Horace Pennypacker
Holiday for Lovers (1959) (20th Century Fox) ... Robert Dean
Satan Never Sleeps (1962) (20th Century Fox) ... Father Bovard
