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Clifton Webb: Movies
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A remarkable character actor, Clifton Webb was a familiar presence in American movies of the 1940s and 1950s. He is especially memorable for his transformation of the Hollywood sissy into a more serious--even threatening--figure.
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Hard-to-Find Clifton Webb DVD/VHS Videos - The Movie Collector's Web Site. Many titles not found elsewhere. Classics of the 30s, 40s, 50s, foreign, musicals, silents, TV shows, B movies, westerns, serials, comedies, dramas and more.
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Clifton Webb movies DVDs filmography available to buy at CDUniverse are listed below. Information on films includes: other actor and actress, star cast and crew information, reviews, director, photo of cover art, product pics and more.
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In 1925, Webb appeared on stage in a dance act with vaudeville star and silent film actress Mary Hay. Later that year, when she and her husband, Tol'able David 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 19 more years would pass before Webb appeared in another feature film.
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This was Clifton Webb's first big starring role and his first movie role of any kind since 1930. He was a stage actor who refused the studio's demand for a screen test; Otto Preminger, who began by producing the film and ended by directing it, in desperation filmed Webb on a Broadway stage and showed that to Zanuck. ''He doesn't walk, he flies,'' an underling told Zanuck, but Webb, who had a mannered camp style, impressed Zanuck and got the role. Vincent Price creates an accent somewhere between Kentucky and Transylvania for his character, who is tall and healthy and inspires Waldo Lydecker to complain to Laura: ''With you, a lean strong body is the measure of a man.''
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Webb as the decadent, conceited, mean-spirited, hypocritical, self-absorbed Lydecker is the very picture of self-confidence, both as a character in the movie and as an actor. This would seem a contradiction. Clifton Webb had been a song-and-dance man on Broadway, not necessarily a dramatic actor, and he had been in very few movies before this one, and then only in very minor roles. His known homosexuality had apparently put him off most Hollywood studios. But director Otto Preminger had faith in him and demanded he be in the picture, over the objections of Fox's studio chief at the time, Darryl F. Zanuck.
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