A remarkable character actor, Clifton Webb was a familiar presence on Broadway in the 1920s & 1930s & in American movies of the 1940s & 1950s, a leading New York ballroom dancer, & a respected actor in stage roles both drama & musical comedy. In his mid-50s director Otto Preminger chose him over the objections of 20th Century Fox to star as the elegant but evil radio columnist Waldo Lydecker in the film noir Laura (1944). His performance won him wide acclaim, & Webb was signed to a long-term contract with Fox. Clifton Webb’s deliciously eccentric, snobbish performance, as both a criric & Laura’s mentor is amazing. Patterned after real-life New York drama critic Alexander Woollcott, Webb’s dialogue is quotable from start to finish.
With Dana Andrews in Laura.
In the golden era of Hollywood,the sissy was usually a sexless fussy foil to the straight star, who entered briefly to liven things up with a quip & a raised eyebrow or a dramatic exit. In Laura, the sissy retains all the old characteristics: sophistication, brittleness, cynicism, while adding a new element of suppressed violence & sexual passion that threatens not only the other characters but also widely held cultural assumptions about the passivity of the effeminate male.
Webb played this role to perfection; as Waldo he is at once droll & scary, capable of pitifulness & viciousousness: "I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbors' children devoured by wolves". He is both held in contempt & mollycoddled by a straight policeman, who doesn't realize until it is almost too late that this sissy is also a killer. Webb had the charisma & authority to rescue the sissy from minor roles; he is either the star or a major player in all of his films that followed.
On stage, Webb's home was the Broadway theatre. He was tall, thin, & sang in a clear, gentle tenor. Webb appeared in 23 Broadway shows. He introduced Irving Berlin's Easter Parade & George & Ira Gershwin's I've Got a Crush on You, Schwartz & Dietz's I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan. Most of Webb's Broadway shows were musicals, but he also starred in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, & his longtime pal- Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit & Present Laughter, in parts that Coward wrote for Webb .
He was a major Hollywood star, remarkable considering that he was not particularly handsome or a real leading man. 2 years after his role in Laura he was reunited with his co-star- Gene Tierney as the elitist Elliott Templeton in The Razor’s Edge (1946). He received Oscar nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for both his performances in Laura & The Razor’s Edge. Webb also received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty, the first in a 3-film series of comedic Mr. Belvedere movies with Webb portraying a difficult but wise babysitter.
Webb was most certainly homosexual, it was an open secret in the Hollywood community. His most important relationship appears to have been with his mother- Maybelle, to who served as his secretary, business manager, & his constant companion at parties. I can't imagine how he met guys. When Maybelle died at age 90, Noël Coward famously remarked that Webb was “the world’s oldest living orphan.”
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