Attractive holiday card from the Academy Award-winning English stage and costume designer for films and theatre, featuring a color silk screen illustration by him and inscribed in his hand around the printed internal holiday greeting "To Mabel - Clifton / Fondly." Year of 1957 inscribed in pencil to verso in an unknown hand. In fine condition. 8 x 6 inches (20 x 15 cm).

A wonderful association holiday card addressed to one of the leading actor/dancer/singers on Broadway and in Hollywood. He introduced Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade" and Gershwin's "I've Got a Crush on You" (Treasure Girl, 1928)  and later went on to star in numerous films and receive several Oscar nominations. 

Clifton Webb lived with his mother Mabelle almost his entire life. She was the centre of his universe, and the two were inseparable (Webb would take his mother everywhere: to dinner parties, movie premieres, on vacation etc.). When Mabelle died in 1960 at age 91, Webb's world collapsed and he became inconsolable. His uncontrolled and incessant grieving made playwright and close friend Noel Coward write in his diary a few months after Mabelle's death: "Poor Clifton [..] is still, after two months, wailing and sobbing over Maybelle's death. As she was well over ninety, gaga, and had driven him mad for years, this seems excessive and over indulgent. He arrives here on Monday and I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas. Poor, poor Clifton. I am, of course, deeply sorry for him but he must snap out of it." Well, 'snap out of it' Webb never did. He would never get over his mother's death and make only one more movie, Satan never sleeps (1962). The remainder of his life --he died six years later at age 76-- Webb would spend in relative seclusion while struggling with his health.