Clifton Webb: A One-Person Play in Two Acts

By: Michael B. Druxman

Narrated by: John A. Boulanger

Clifton Webb was one of those rare motion picture actors who became a major box-office star when he was in his mid-50s.

Indeed, his first sound movie was Laura (1944), and his role as Waldo Lydecker in that classic film noir earned him the first of three Oscar nominations. Four years later, Clifton Webb became a household name when he played Lynn Belvedere and poured a bowl of mush onto a baby's head in Sitting Pretty. He would appear as Belvedere in two subsequent films and also star in such memorable entertainments as The Razor's Edge, Cheaper by the Dozen, Stars and Stripes Forever, Titanic (1953), and Three Coins in The Fountain.

Webb was no novice when he began his motion picture career. He started his journey in show business at age five, when his stage mother, Maybelle, left her husband in Indiana and took young Clifton to New York. Maybelle would remain the most important and influential person in her son's life until she died when Webb was in his 70s. Over the years, Webb would become one of the most revered actor-dancers in nightclubs, on Broadway, in London, and in Paris. He introduced Irving Berlin's Easter Parade to the public and worked with the likes of Noel Coward, Fred Allen, and The Dolly Sisters, as well as enjoying troubled relationships with actresses Jeanne Eagels and Libby Holman.

Michael B. Druxman's one-person play, Clifton Webb, finds the actor in his Beverly Hills home, still mourning the death of his mother. He ponders returning to work in a new film while, at the same time, struggling with his and Maybelle's unsettled relationship.

©2019 Michael B. Druxman (P)2019 Michael B. Druxman