Clifton Webb

Clifton Webb
From the trailer for the film Laura (1944).
Born	Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck (1889-11-19)November 19, 1889 Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Died	October 13, 1966(1966-10-13) (aged 76) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Heart attack
Resting place	Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Years active	1913–1962

Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck (born November 19, 1889 – October 13, 1966), known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, dancer, and singer known for his Oscar-nominated roles in such films as Laura (1944), The Razor's Edge (1946), and Sitting Pretty (1948). He was known for his stage appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, notably Blithe Spirit, as well as appearances on Broadway in a number of very successful musical revues.

Webb was born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was the only child of Jacob Grant Hollenbeck (1867 – May 2, 1939), the ticket-clerk son of a grocer from an Indiana farming family, and his wife, the former Mabel A. Parmelee (a.k.a. Parmalee or Parmallee; March 24, 1869 – October 17, 1960), the daughter of David Parmelee, a railroad conductor. The couple married in Kankakee, Illinois on January 18, 1888, and separated in 1891, shortly after their son's birth. According to Marion County, Indiana, marriage records, they married in Indianapolis on January 18, 1888.

In 1892, Webb's mother, now called "Mabelle", moved to New York City with her beloved "little Webb", as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about her husband, Jacob, who, like her father, worked for the Indianapolis-St. Louis Railroad, by saying, "We never speak of him. He didn't care for the theatre." The couple apparently divorced, since by 1900, Mabelle was married to Green B. Raum, Jr. New York City's 1900 U.S. census indicates Mabelle and her son were using the surname Raum and living on West 77th Street with Green Berry Raum, Jr., a copper-foundry worker, who gave his position in the household as Mabel's husband. Raum was the son of General Green Berry Raum, former U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue and former U.S. Commissioner of Pensions. Webb's father, Jacob, married, as his second wife, Ethel Brown, and died in 1939.

By the age of nineteen, using the name Clifton Webb, he had become a professional ballroom dancer, often partnering "exceedingly decorative" star dancer Bonnie Glass (she eventually replaced him with Rudolph Valentino), and performed in about two dozen operettas before debuting on Broadway as Bosco in The Purple Road, which opened at the Liberty Theatre on April 7, 1913, and ran for 136 performances before closing in August. His mother (billed as Mabel Parmalee) was listed in the program as a member of the opening night cast. His next musical was an Al Jolson vehicle, Sigmund Romberg's Dancing Around. It opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on October 10, 1914, and had 145 performances, closing in February, 1915. Later that year, Webb was in the all-star revue Ned Wayburn's Town Topics, which boasted 117 famous performers, including Will Rogers, listed in the Century Theatre opening night program of September 23, 1915. It closed 68 performances later on November 20, 1915. In 1916, he had another short run with Cole Porter's comic opera See America First, which opened at the Maxine Elliott Theatre on March 28, 1916, and closed after 15 performances on April 8, 1916.