- Born
- Died
- Birth nameWebb Parmalee Hollenbeck
- Height1.79 m
- Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in middle age as the classy villain Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), followed by the part of Elliott Templeton in Le fil du rasoir (1946) - both of which won him Oscar nominations. His priggish Mr. Belvedere in a series of films was supposedly not far removed from his fastidious, finicky, fussy, abrasive and condescending real-life persona. He was inseparable from his overbearing mother Maybelle, with whom he lived until her death at 91, six years before his own death. The recent success of Titanic (1997) created brief interest due his having appeared with Barbara Stanwyck in the 1953 version of the story. He is interred at Abbey of the Psalms, Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now known as Hollywood Forever).- IMDb mini biography by: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsMabel. A ParmeleeJacob Grant Hollenbeck
- RelativesDavid Parmelee(Grandparent)
- Frequently played suave, dandy villains
- There followed an interlude in Hollywood in 1935 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.".
- Acknowledged as the inspiration for Mr. Peabody on Rocky and His Friends (1959).
- Introduced Irving Berlin's classic song Easter Parade on the Broadway stage.
- 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." Webb and Maybelle 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 Noël 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 last film, then spent the remainder of his life in ill health and seclusion.
- 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.
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