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103 5 C H a P t e r 8 Great Plays, Then the Great War In the late 1920s, Clifton Webb had a chance to meet some of his relatives . He also had a meeting with his father, seeing him for the first time since he left Indianapolis as a child. “When I was in Chicago a cousin of mine that was living there came to see me. I had not seen her since I was a kid in Indiana, but she told me my father was there and asked if I’d like to see him. So a meeting was arranged, and he, and my mother, who was there with me, all went out to dinner. It was a very amusing meeting inasmuch as we hadn’t seen him in so many years. They carried on like a couple of school kids. It was really rather pleasant to see. After that, through the years, we corresponded. “He’d remarried and was living in St. Louis. I found him most affable , still tall, dark, and handsome, with a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh. Whenever he came to New York, he and Mabelle and I would dine together. When I was playing in St. Louis in 1934 with As Thousands Cheer, we lunched together. He told me that he hoped I bore him no malice about the way he treated my mother when I was a child. He was very anxious for me to like him. I told him that I couldn’t look on him really as a father because I hardly knew him, and after all, what happened in their youth happens to a lot of young people who get married too young. “In 1937, I received a telegram of his death. Following that I received a letter from his lawyers, that he left me some timberland in Louisiana, and, according to Louisiana law, any offspring was to receive one-third of the estate. This came as a great surprise, it being the first time that I had ever been left anything by anybody. Later on, when I was playing g r e at P l ay s , t H e n t H e g r e at wa r 104 The Man Who Came to Dinner in St. Louis, I met his wife, who came to the hotel where I was staying. We lunched together, and all during luncheon I was very conscious that my mother, who was there at the time, was peeking from behind a panel, trying to see what her successor looked like.” With the success of The Little Show and Three’s a Crowd, Webb and Mabelle were able to rent a stylish apartment at 410 Park Avenue in Manhattan to complement their “weekend” house in Greenwich, Connecticut , that he had named High Acres. He also hired a maid and chauffeur: “So we could live like human beings.” In 1932 following Three’s a Crowd, Webb appeared in what some have called “the fourth generation” of a series of revues that began with The Little Show. This revue sired two other hits: Three’s a Crowd and The Band Wagon. Max Gordon produced and made sure that Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz were not above composing music for a fourth revue that followed a similar musical pattern found in their other recent hits. The “new” show was called Flying Colors. It opened on September 15, 1932, and ran until June 25, 1933. Brooks Atkinson, commenting on this repetition, said, “Now that the freshness of style has worn off in the fourth generation, the aristocracy of musical entertainment needs new blood.” But other critics didn’t care. They loved all the Max Gordon shows regardless of their similarity. Gordon was not alone in following a successful show with several similar efforts. The Earl Carroll Vanities gave birth to ten shows, all much the same other than a few trimmings like the visually delightful sets of nineteen-year-old Vincente Minnelli. In Flying Colors, Webb was again teamed with Tamara Geva. Patsy Kelly was cast in what might have been a Libby Holman role, and comedian Charles Butterworth was the monologist instead of Fred Allen. This show featured two pairs of dancers. In addition to Webb and Geva, the eccentric dance team of Buddy and Vilma Ebsen danced to the harmonica melodies of Larry Adler. Vocalist Jean Sargent sang “Alone Together” while Webb and Geva performed an elegant, sinuous dance that...

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