Clifton Webb
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
The final resting place of actor Clifton Webb is one of two locations
at Hollywood Forever Cemetery that are reportedly haunted.
Webb was trained as an actor and dancer at a very young age,
and was an experienced performer by the time he reached his teens. He quit
school at 13 to study music and painting and, at 17, he sang with the Boston
Opera Company. Later, he danced at nightclubs and dance halls in New York City
at the same time as another young dancer who would later find success in films,
Rudolph Valentino. Webb then began appearing in musical comedies and dramas
on both the Broadway stage and in London.
In the early 1920s, Webb came to Los Angeles and made his
film debut with a small role in "Polly With a Past" (1924). After appearing
in a handful of films, Webb went back to Broadway in 1930. He returned to
Hollywood as the elegantly creepy society columnist Waldo Lydecker in "Laura"
Webb specialized in playing fastidious, acerbic and somewhat
prissy characters, and is perhaps best known for playing Mr. Belvedere, the
baby-sitter and housekeeper in "Sitting Pretty," and two sequels, "Mr. Belvedere
Goes to College" (1949) and "Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell" (1951). Webb also
appeared in "Cheaper by the Dozen" (1950), "Stars and Stripes Forever" (1952),
"Titanic" (1953), "Mister Scoutmaster" (1953), "Three Coins in the Fountain"
(1954), "The Man Who Never Was" (1956) and "The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker" (1959).
Despite his image as a pedantic fussbudget, Webb was a well-known
figure on the Hollywood party circuit, usually escorting his mother, Maybelle,
to parties and dances until she died in 1959. Visitors to the mausoleum have
reported seeing a ghostly figure of a well-dressed man near Webb's crypt, and
his home on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills was reportedly haunted from the time
of Webb's death until it was torn down. Before his death, Webb told friends
that he loved the home, and he would never leave it, even after his death.
Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck on Nov. 11, 1889, in
Indianapolis, IN. He died Oct. 13, 1966, in Beverly Hills, CA.
1889 - 1966
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