Sitting Pretty

More than any other male movie star, the refined Clifton Webb (1889-1966) caused the movie-going public to change its image of a leading man. In a day when leading men were supposed to be strong, virile, and brave, Clifton Webb projected an image of flip, acerbic arrogance. One of the most consistent moneymakers in the history of Twentieth Century Fox, for more than fifteen Webb rivaled the more typical leading men of the postwar years.

This was due in large part to his ability to play everything from a decadent columnist (Laura) to a fertile father (Cheaper by the Dozen and The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker), all while delivering lines in an urbanely clipped, acidly dry manner with impeccable timing. Sitting Pretty (University Press of Mississippi) is his remarkable story told mostly in his own words.

Long before his film career began, Webb was a child actor and later a suavely effete song-and-dance man in numerous Broadway musicals and revues. The turning point in his career came in 1941 when his good friend Noel Coward cast him in Blithe Spirit. Director Otto Preminger saw Webb's performance and cast him in Laura in 1944.

Webb began to write his autobiography but said he eventually had gotten "bogged down" in the process. However, he did complete six chapters and left a hefty collection of notes that he intended to use in the proposed book. His writing is as witty and sophisticated as his on-screen persona.

Those six chapters as well as information from his voluminous notes, along with personal research by the David Smith, provide an intimate view of an amazingly talented man's life and times.

Sitting Pretty: The Life and Times of Clifton Webb Is the first biography of the prominent theater and film actor Clifton Webb and features numerous photographs of Webb and his contemporaries

David L. Smith is professor emeritus of telecommunications at Ball State University. He is the author of Hoosiers in Hollywood and has published in Films of the Golden Age and Classic Images.