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Known for:	Laura, Titanic, The Man Who Never Was
Birth name:	Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck
Birthday:	11 November 1889, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Height:	5' 11" (1.80 m)

Created the role of Charles Condomine in Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" on the London and New York stages. Acknowledged as the inspiration for Mr. Peabody on "Bullwinkle Show, The" (1961) Appeared on the New York stage in 1925 in a dance act with Mary Hay. Interred at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now called Hollywood Forever), Hollywood, California, USA, in the Abbey of the Psalms. It was Clifton Webb who first introduced Irving Berlin's classic song "Easter Parade" on the Broadway stage. The part that got away: Ayn Rand wanted him to play suave villain Ellsworth Toohey in the 1943 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. 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. 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. 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. Studied painting with the renowned Robert Henri and voice with the equally famous Victor Maurel 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, 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. Webb's elegant taste kept him on Hollywood's best-dressed lists for decades. His scrupulously gay private life remained free of scandal. 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."

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