Clifton Webb

 In 1892, Clifton Webb's formidable mother, Mabelle, 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-one." Webb never recovered from his mother's death. He made one film, then spent the remainder of his life in ill health and seclusion, eventually dying of a heart attack at the age of 76. He is interred in crypt 2350, corridor G-6, Abbey of the Psalms in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, alongside his mother.

Writer Walter Reisch said that Daryl Zanuck called in him and Charles Brackett and said "I have Clifton Webb under contract, and we have CinemaScope, and I now want to do something big... Don't make Clifton a clown. I want him to start a new career as a character actor. Use all the young people we have on the lot, like Audrey Dalton and Robert Wagner . . ."

Reisch says he came up with idea of a film revolving around the sinking of the Titanic and pitched Webb as one of the 25 multimillionaires who died on the ship. He said the film, released in 1953 under the title "Titanic," would be "60 percent truth, completely documentary" drawing on real life accounts. Charles Brackett, who co-wrote and produced the film, told the press that some of the stories had to be discarded, "because they are too fantastic for movie audiences to believe."

Happy Birthday, Clifton Webb!