Actors - Clifton Webb

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	Actors - Clifton Webb

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 (see ).

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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Clifton Webb ]

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Actors - Clifton Webb

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