Though that was an internal matter, Webb's camping in the press-a declaration of his queerness-was public, and so were movie performances that by 1949 included a queen and a confirmed bachelor, which could be translated as a homosexual man. Pennypacker (Henry Levin, 1959) for name-calling Noel Coward a queer. According to Ray Stricklyn, Webb was "a known homosexual" who petitioned Fox to fire Ron Ely from The Remarkable Mr.
Notwithstanding the shibboleths of family and conformity in postwar America, he was among the visible queer celebrities of the era, especially so on his home ground. The reticence seemed hardly necessary, since the entertainment press and even his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, as early as Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), were almost as forthcoming about Webb as Webb himself. The anecdote appears in the manuscript of Negulesco's 1984 memoir but not the memoir itself, perhaps because the story was fabricated, or the author (or his publisher) was unwilling to "out" a man who had not "outed" himself.
"Are you a homosexual?" Had Negulesco not already known or guessed the answer-and had Webb not telegraphed it-the director would not have risked discomfiting the actor or himself. "Clifton-a personal question," director Jean Negulesco asked Clifton Webb in 1952. I believe that we are both inclined to write things into Belvedere that the theatergoing public is not completely aware of.ĭarryl Zanuck to Clifton Webb, February 16, 1951
Abstract: Attentive to a wide range of signs that mark queerness, "Becoming Clifton Webb" not only shows that Webb was perceived as queer in the mid-twentieth century but argues that, coincident with Sexual Behavior and the Human Male (1948), he helped introduce moviegoers to the "new" homosexual of the postwar era.