Clifton Webb |
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Actor Credits
Other InformationAwardsBest Motion Picture Actor - Musical/Comedy Golden Globes [1953] (Won/Nominated: Nominated) Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Awards [1949] (Won/Nominated: Nominated) Best Supporting Actor Golden Globes [1947] (Won/Nominated: Won) Best Actor in a Support Role Academy Awards [1947] (Won/Nominated: Nominated) Best Actor in a Support Role Academy Awards [1945] (Won/Nominated: Nominated) Star on the Walk of Fame Walk of Fame |
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Clifton Webb Biography |
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Webb, Clifton [né Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck] (1893–1966), actor, dancer, and singer. The slim, dapper, somewhat epicene performer was born in Indianapolis and began acting professionally when still a young boy, goaded on by Mrs. Hollenbeck, who was to become one of Broadway`s most famous stage mothers. He left the theatre to study painting and then to work under Victor Maurel to prepare for an opera career, which was short lived. By 1911 Webb was a song and dance man in The Purple Road. Later he played in, among others, Dancing Around (1914), See America First (1916), Love o` Mike (1917), Listen Lester (1918), and As You Were (1920). After a stint in London, Webb returned to create the role of the sporting youngblood Victor Staunton in Meet the Wife (1923). He played a major supporting role in the musical Sunny (1925) but reached stardom with the revue The Little Show (1929) in which he sang “I Guess I`ll Have to Change My Plan.” He shone in the subsequent revues Three`s a Crowd (1930), Flying Colors (1932), and As Thousands Cheer (1933), in which he introduced “Easter Parade.” His last musical appearance was in You Never Know (1938). Two Noel Coward comedies marked his farewell to the stage. In both instances Webb played the parts Coward had written for himself in London: the astral bigamist Charles Condomine in Blithe Spirit (1941) and the egomaniacal actor Garry Essendine in Present Laughter (1946). In his later years he was popular in films.
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BiographyFriends and FamilyGertrude Lawrence [Friend] :: Libby Holman [Friend] :: Noel Coward [Friend]Trivia and QuotesTrivia There followed an interlude in Hollywood in the early 1930s when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put Webb on a salary of $3,000 a week. While socially it turned out to be a pleasant experience, professionally it was a disaster. For eighteen months, he swam, attended gala parties, met all the important people, but never once appeared in a motion picture. He referred to Hollywood as "a land of endowed vacations." His elegant taste kept him on Hollywood`s best-dressed lists for decades. His scrupulously-private gay life remained free of scandal. In 1925 Clifton appeared on stage in a dance act with vaudeville star and silent film actress Mary Hay. Later that year, when she and her husband, film star Richard Barthelmess, decided to produce and star in their own film vehicle New Toys (1925), they chose Webb to be second lead. The movie proved to be financially successful, but nineteen more years would pass before Webb appeared in another feature film. Studied painting with the renowned Robert Henri and voice with the equally famous Victor Maurel. In 1892, his formidable mother, Mabelle (1869-1960), 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, Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, a railroad ticket clerk, by saying, "We never speak of him. He didn`t care for the theater." They lived together until her death at age 91. When Clifton`s obsessive grieving for his mother continued on for well over a year, close friend Noel Coward, keeping their lengthy friendship in mind, is said to have remarked with a bit of exasperation, "It must be difficult to be orphaned at seventy." Webb never recovered from his mother`s death. He made one film, then spent the remainder of his life in ill health and seclusion. Was a close personal friend of co-star (in The Little Show, Three`s a Crowd, and You Never Know) Libby Holman. Sharing a common homosexual lifestyle, Webb (with his mother) would accompany Holman on frequent vacations and would remain friends until the mid-1940`s. Webb`s career ascent on Broadway paralleled Libby Holman, who co-starred with him in successful Broadway shows in 1929-30 (he tended to dance while she sang). The two (actually three, if you count Webb`s mother) became lifelong friends and would re-team for the troubled 1938 production of Cole Porter`s "You Never Know," which would fold after 73 performances. 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. It was Clifton Webb who first introduced Irving Berlin`s classic song "Easter Parade" on the Broadway stage. Interred at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now called Hollywood Forever), Hollywood, California, USA, in the Abbey of the Psalms. Appeared on the New York stage in 1925 in a dance act with Mary Hay. Acknowledged as the inspiration for Mr. Peabody on "Bullwinkle Show, The" (1961) Created the role of Charles Condomine in Noel Coward`s "Blithe Spirit" on the London and New York stages. | ||
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