Want to know the best Clifton Webb movies? How about the worst Clifton Webb movies? Curious about Clifton Webb box office grosses or which Clifton Webb movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Clifton Webb movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Clifton Webb (1889-1966) was a three time Oscar®-nominated American actor. Despite his emaciated looks he became a major box-office attraction from the mid 1940s to the end of the 1950s. His IMDB page shows 27 credits from 1917-1962. This page will rank 20 Clifton Webb movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His silent movie appearances and his cameo roles were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: This Clifton Webb page comes from a request by Cameron that was made only a few days ago. So how did it get to the top of the request pile? Well is often the case…when we get a request….we take a quick look to see how difficult the page will be to complete. In this case…60% of his movies were already in our database….but what was even more impressive was the fact that every single Clifton Webb movie was listed in Variety’s Top Grossers of the year. Well…kids….that has never happened before (ok…it did with James Dean…but he only had 3 movies). Not for Clark Gable, not for Cary Grant, not for John Wayne. So since it was not going to take much research….Cameron’s request jumped all the other requests.
Clifton Webb Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Clifton Webb Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Clifton Webb movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Clifton Webb movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Clifton Webb movies by yearly worldwide box office rank
- Sort Clifton Webb movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Clifton Webb movie received.
- Sort Clifton Webb movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Clifton Webb
1. Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1889.
2. Clifton Webb was trained to be a singer and dancer. He even sang with the Boston Opera Company. These skills were never used during his film career….but they did get him to Broadway.
3. Clifton Webb was signed by MGM to a 18-month contract. MGM believed it could make a dancing star out of Webb…the same way RKO had made Fred Astaire a star. The studio wanted Webb to do a musical entitled “Elegance” opposite Joan Crawford. When Crawford lost interest in the project the movie was dropped.
4. Clifton Webb was nominated three times for an acting Oscar®: 1944’s Laura (Best Supporting Actor), 1946’s The Razor’s Edge (Best Supporting Actor) and 1948’s Sitting Pretty.
5. Clifton Webb never married and had no children. He lived with his mother until her death at age 91 in 1960…he passed away in 1966. She called him…her “Little Webb” all of his life.
6. Clifton Webb was the inspiration for Mr. Peabody on “The Bullwinkle Show” cartoon.
7. Clifton Webb was listed three times in the Quigley Top Box Office Star polls: He was ranked 14th in 1949, 7th in 1950 and 21st in 1951.
8. In Joel Hirschhorn’s Rating The Movie Stars book….Clifton Webb has an average score of 3.22 Stars per movie (4.00 stars is the highest in his ratings)….that is good enough to put Webb in the Top 25% of all the stars he rated.
9. In Joel Hirschhorn’s Rating The Movie Stars book….they list 7 of his movies as 4 star performances: 1944’s Laura, 1946’s The Razor’s Edge, 1948’s Sitting Pretty, 1950’s Cheaper By The Dozen, 1952’s Dreamboat, 1953’s Titanic and 1954’s Woman’s World.
10. Check out Clifton Webb’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
Check out Steve’s Clifton Webb Movie Ranking YouTube Video
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Clifton Webb’s stock-in-trade was to a fair extent playing snobbish and normally crusty upper- or middle-class characters but usually dignified and with high personal character standards.
Within the latter context my own fave line from a Webb film was in 1953’s Titanic when he was standing waiting for his wife and other women/children to be lowered into one of the lifeboats when he haughtily says to his wife, who naturally would like him to go with her, something like “I bid you goodbye – and now I must go round to the other side of the ship where my own boat is waiting.” There was of course no boat waiting for him round there: he had departed to in effect die.
BEST POSTERS IN STEVE’s VIDEO [Video Overall 98.5% rated for personal satisfaction].
1/Elopement
2/two for Satan Never Sleeps
3/two for Boy on a Dolphin
4/Mr Pennnypacker
5/Two for Mr Belvedere Rings the Bell
6/first one for Dreamboat
7/Mr Scoutmaster
8/Three Coins in the Fountain
9/two for Cheaper by the Dozen
10/foreign Language one for Woman’s World
11/first one for Titanic
12/two for Dark Corner
13/2nd one for Sitting Pretty
14/1st one for For Heaven’s Sake
15/Laura
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and lyrics, always appreciated.
Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Fox chief Darryl Zanuck was opposed to the casting of Clifton Webb in Laura, thinking he was too effeminate to play newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker, turned out well though, Webb nabbed an Oscar nomination.
Webb picked up another Oscar nod for The Razor’s Edge.
And a third Oscar nomination playing unlikely baby sitter Lynn Belvedere in Sitting Pretty, it was a big hit and there were two sequels.
One film scored 10 out of 10 in Clifton Webbs filmography – Laura. Two more scored 9 out of 10 – The Razor’s Edge and Sitting Pretty.
Laura tops both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes charts.
Webb on Laura – “When I saw myself sitting in the bathtub looking very much like Mohandas K. Gandhi. I felt I might vomit. After it was over, Dana Andrews saved my life with a big swig of bourbon. The first shock of seeing myself had a strange effect on me, psychologically, as it made me realize for the first time that I was no longer a dashing young juvenile, which I must have fancied myself being through the years in the theatre.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for your usually informative and always interesting feedback. I loved the trivia about Dana and the bourbon; he always looked to me like a bourbon type of guy! In a way the trajectory of Clifton Webb’s career reminds me of that of Sydney Greenstreet as the greatest fame came to most men late in life.
From 1902-1941 Sydney worked on the stage and at the age of 61 made his film debut in of course Maltese Falcon after which he made many more movies and along with Peter Lorre Sydney became a big part of the 1940s Bogart legend.
Clifton too had an early stage as well as a ballroom-dancing career and from 1917 – 1930 appeared in uncredited and/or supporting roles in 6 obscure mostly silent movies that are long forgotten.
Then after a 14-year gap he broke through on the big screen in 1944’s Laura and became even more of a star in the Belvedere comedies and their like earning places in the Quigley box office poll of the 25 most popular stars in the US over the 3 consecutive years 1949-1951.
In the early fifties as your posters amply illustrate Clifton’s name appeared above many other important established film stars of that time: June Allyson/Lauren Bacall/Shirley Temple/Barbara Stanwyck/Van Heflin/Fred MacMurray/and Myrna Loy [though who WASN’T getting billed above HER!].
Between 1945 and 1951 Clifton appeared in 6 radio productions and for example in 1950 he reprised his Lynn Belvedere role in a radio version of Mr Belvedere Goes to College in which he was joined by the great Alexander Alec Leach as his co-star. What a value-for-money comedy team albeit in voice-only! In appearing alongside Al Leach even just on the air Clifton demonstrated that he had been accepted into the company of movie ‘royalty’.
Hughes Greenstreet and Parmelee Hollenbeck!: along with Brando in 1950s The Men [aka Battle Stripe] giving us possibly 3 of the most charismatic tour-de-force star-building performances in movie history [and some might argue that Asta maybe makes it 4]!
And what contrasts there were among those 4: one barked; and one mumbled; but the other pair had a great way with words and provided two of the most mesmerizing voices in American-movie history!
Hi Bruce, interesting facts and info on Clifton Webb especially “the fact that every single Clifton Webb movie was listed in Variety’s Top Grossers of the year.” And I haven’t even heard of some those films!
In fact I’ve only seen 3 of the 20 films listed here – Laura, Boy on a Dolphin and Titanic – seems he wasn’t appearing in the type of films that attracted me as a young film fan. And I’m still not that excited about them as an old film fan. 🙂
The Razor’s Edge tops Laura on the UMR, well I haven’t seen it so I can’t pass judgement.
Good work Bruce. Vote Up!
Hey Steve…thanks for checking out our Clifton Webb page…..well….I have you topped…as my tally is 5…..though I just rented Woman’s World today…so soon…I will be double your tally….that does not happen to often when we are looking at a classic movie page.
I thought it was amazing that every single of his movies from 1944 to 1962 hit those tables….that simple does not happen….even the greatest have a severe clucker in their movie past.
I like Laura more….. but the Razor’s Edge has some great reviews….but the two movies are pretty close…for sure.
Good to see a Steve Lensman comment….getting back to normal again…..:)
“I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. I had just begun to write Laura’s story when another of those detectives came to see me. I made him wait but I could watch him through the half-open door.”
This is part of the brilliant Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck’s opening voice-over speech as the waspish and dandified newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker in Laura. The detective mentioned is of course Dana Andrews a great fave of my own in the 1950s though the flowing beauty of Clifton’s performance in Laura was possibly matched by just that of Vincent Price. Historians reckon that this was maybe the first film to hint at gay-male character undertones.
BEST STILLS/LOBBY CARDS IN STEVE’s VIDEO
1/Mr Scoutmaster
2/3 Coins in the Fountain
3/Cheaper by the Dozen
4/Woman’s World
5/Dark Corner
6/Holiday for Lovers
7/Lad on a Dolphin
8/two for Mr Pennypacker
9 and 10/ the two Mr Belvedere ones
11/Dreamboat- nickname of Clifton’s character
12/Stars and Stripes Forever
13/The Man who Never Was
14/The Razor’s Edge
15/Laura – very atmospheric and haunting still
16/Titanic-Clifton dapper as usual and getting billed above mega Legend Barbara Stanwyck.
“Laura is the face in the misty light
Footsteps that you hear down the hall
The laugh that floats on a summer night
That you can never quite recall
And you see Laura on a train that is passing through
Those eyes how familiar they seem
She gave your very first kiss to you
That was Laura but she’s only a dream.”
BRUCE! If I was not a tee total person I would swear I was drunk when I tried twice before to make this post in a proper fashion so please, please delete my 6.16 and 6.19 am posts about Clifton and accept my humble apologies [though mind you the ‘sins of Myrna’ are probably worth repeating !] .
1 I welcome this new page on Clifton, an actor who possibly is too often overlooked when discussing great performers of the classic era. In my opinion there was nobody quite like Webb for playing the waspish and at times vitriolic snob as he amply demonstrated in dramas like Laura and The Razor’s Edge. If I recall correctly part of his opening voice-over speech in Laura it went something like “A detective called to see me about Laura’s disappearance but I made him wait!” He was also excellent at comedy as he showed us in for example the Mr Belvedere movies and in the little known Mr Scoutmaster in 1953.
2 In conjunction with extensive stage work Clifton made a few silent movies between 1917 and 1925 and one short 10 minute film The Still Alarm in 1930, with Fred Allen for Vitaphone but it was only with Laura in 1944 in his mid-fifties that his serious movie career began and the Belvedere films made him a star. Although his career at the top was relatively short as you have illustrated his status as a prominent performer in movies is testified by the fact that as again you’ve mentioned he got listed in the Quigley popularity charts and by the number of other major stars who were prepared to cede top billing to him: Barbra Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, June Allyson, Lauren Bacall, Fred MacMurray, Shirley Temple and Jane Wyman. In the 1950 Cheaper by the Dozen his female co-stars Jeanne Crain and Myrna Loy did not even get equal billing to Clifton in the original theatrical release posters as demonstrated on Wikipedia.***
3 Congratulations to this site for once again profiling an important movie personality of yesteryear and providing us with his domestic box office record over the 20 talking pictures that he made
***Loy the usurper has once more been allowed to use Cogerson to display airs and graces above her station as she is listed in the link column as Clifton’s leading lady in Cheaper by the Dozen whereas Jeanne Crain was the main actress in that one..
Reply
Hey Bob.
1. I deleted the two previous posts….you are right….they were really hard to follow….but I still give you an “A” for effort.
2. The co-star column…got changed to UMR links column….the first rule of that column….is if I have another page that lists the movie…it gets the spot on the table….the second rule…no matter what the billing….if Bruce Willis, Michael Caine, Cary Grant or Myrna Loy appear in the movie that get listed….gotta stay with the ones I like…lol.
3. On to Mr. Webb. Gotta admit…I had not really thought about his career to much….sure I have read his section in my Rating The Stars book many times….but I generally thought he was a supporting character in a few good movies.
4. When I saw Cameron’s request….I opened up my movie gross book….and was shocked that every movie I looked up was right there in the Variety lists….I kept saying…”I will stop when I hit the first few missing movies”…..then before I knew it …I was in 1962 and finding Satan Never Sleeps….and I was done….that HAS NEVER HAPPENED before. Many times I get about 10 movies in….and go “Well that one will be a pain in the ass to do….to the back burner you go”….lol. So in a nutshell…I think I have been underestimating his career.
5. He makes Laura a great movie….well deserving of his first Oscar nomination in that role.
6. You, like others, have been talking about his comic skills….I have not seen any of his comedies yet….I will have to see if I can track down any of these movies…the only classic movie in my que of movies to watch in the near future is Newman’s The Young Philadelphians….which I have never seen before….so it might be awhile before I get to sample his comic skills.
7. Interesting information on his billing…and how he usually got top billing over some of those great you listed.
8. Sorry I was unable to locate any of his Worldwide grosses….I have some good domestic numbers from his 20th Century Fox days..but they rarely mentioned worldwide grosses.
9. I have not seen Cheaper By The Dozen…so your information that Crain was the female lead is news to me….I had just assumed that Loy was the lead…..despite…my joking of her Loy’s greatness….I actually have not watched many of her movies.
Thanks for all of this great information…..especially since it took you three tries to get it right….lol. 🙂
BRUCE
1 Thanks very much for deleting my two wacky Clifton Webb posts. You go to so much trouble to provide us with accurate information and the most comprehensive possible stats that I would consider I was being discourteous if I did not try to make every effort to ensure my own posts to your site were clear and sensible.
2 Thanks also for your additional comments though I was taken aback to learn that you had never seen The Young Philadelphians [aka The City Jungle over here]. Your Newman page gives it 69.5% for critic/audience, IMDB give it a 74% rating and personally I have always regarded Paul’s performance as Anthony Judson Lawrence as his most enjoyable along with Hombre and Cool Hand Luke.
2 So I urge you to give a high priority to viewing it asap and if you can remember please let me know what you think of it. Paul is given fine support from Barbara Rush, Alexis Smith, Robert Vaughn and Brian Keith but no prizes for guessing who gets billed alone above the title!
Hey Bob….no problem about deleting those posts. As for The Young Philadelphians….it is a movie that I have read about/heard about almost my entire “reading life”. I was very happy to see it pop up at the library that I was at. Will probably be watching it tonight or tomorrow.
I did not even realize that Brian Keith was in the movie…..always liked him in his movie roles….probably due to the fact that I used to watch A Family Affair in re-runs when I was growing up. 🙂
Interesting trivia. Not too aware of him. You have been very busy since my last visit. Keep it up.
Thanks Helakoski…..sadly I think many people are the same boat…and not too aware of Mr. Clifton Webb. Your visit and comment are really appreciated…especially since some of these subjects are no where near your favorites. Yes we have been busy….the UMR train is always moving along….lol.
Hi
One of my grandmother’s favourite movies was The Man Who Never Was, it’s a terrific war thriller based on a true story, an unusual part for Clifton Webb as it was quite serious. I think his natural home is comedy. I remember seeing Sitting Pretty and really enjoy it. I have yet to see the 2 sequels.
Cheaper by the Dozen is far superior to the Steve Martin version and of course there’s Laura and Razor’s Edge where he really plays the same type of person.
It was interesting that he had a background in dancing but didn’t pursue that in the movies. I once read that when his mother died at 91, he was clearly very upset and he rang his friend Noel Card for support, after crying for 2 hours over the phone, Noel said, My Dear Boy, you are now a 70 year old orphan.
Another great character actor, thanks.
Hey Chris…good to know your grandmother would have liked this page…if you sort the table by critic/audience rating….The Man Who Never Was is the 2nd highest ranked movie.
Funny that you say his strength was comedy…of the 5 Webb movies I have seen none of them are comedies. So I need to track down some of his comedies….when I see him in movies or pictures….I always think of Dr. Smith on the television show Lost in Space.
That is a funny story about the 70 year old orphan….he was lucky to have her that long in his life….heck he only made it 4 or 5 years after she passed. Thanks for sharing your Clifton Webb thoughts.