"Sitting Pretty" ( 1948) and Clifton Webb- The gayest movie ever played straight .

I am watching it now on TCM. Both Webb and Richard Haydn are playing gay to the tenth degree. And Webb is minding children. Was the postwar audience that naive? Or they saw it for what it was. Richard Haydn plays every gay stereotypes and Webb is gay in drag. I love it. And Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara are in on the joke. (Aside here). She is so beautiful, even in black and white. And the screenwriter(s) wrote lines that the censors were too blind to see. And it is clearly a family movie. Watch it.

Anonymous%20
• Darn it, I hate that I missed it, I've never seen it and always wanted to. We have yet to have the definitive Datalounge thread on the collective filmography of Clifton Webb.

• Webb was a top ten box office draw star who always played it gay, regardless of whether his character was married or in a heterosexual romance. And in his comic roles, he always triumphed. You'd never see a epicene character like the ones he played in films today who isn't mocked or suffers some horrible fate.

• Thanks OP, just put it on.

• Clifton Webb and Cole Porter used to troll for sailors together with Monty Woolley.

• OP, there were many "sissy" characters in the Golden Age of Hollywood. It wasn't that the audience was naive, it was just the stock [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] character was seen as good fun as long as the narrative stayed clear of homosexuality. It was not ignorance. It was turning a blind eye. It was also a period when many [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] men, relative to today, led ostensibly straight, or at least closeted, lives. Read The Celluloid Closet.

• Funniest unintentionally(?) gay scene: when the family waits for Lynn Belvedere (Webb) to come down for breakfast, Robert Young's character talks about dismissing Belvedere, and the eldest son replies, "Aw, I think he's kinda cute!" 8-O Okay, little gayling!u

• [quote]the tenth degree. Oh My!

• Clifton had been devoted to his Mother and when she finally died at a very advanced age, Webb was distraught and devastated and carried on and on about it. His friend Noel Coward observed: "It must be tough to be orphaned at 71." In Douglas Fairbanks Jr's autobiography he tells of having the task of picking up Clifton to transport him to a party being held somewhere. Fairbanks found himself being hit on by Webb with Clifton running his hand up his thigh and saying things that left no doubt to Fairbanks that Webb wanted to play around in the car. Fairbanks says that it took him by surprise and he responded by laughing out loud at Webb. Clifton got so offended that he had the car stopped and he got out and walked the rest of the way to the party. Fairbanks writes that it took Webb a long time to forgive him for laughing at him.

• Saw this for the first time last night. I wonder if Mr. Applegate (Richard Haydn) -- a mincing prisspot devoted to his mother -- was an inside joke about Clifton. He certainly made Clifton look butch by comparison.

• [quote] Darn it, I hate that I missed it, I've never seen it and always wanted to. It's available on Amazon. If you have Prime it's free to watch. Otherwise it's $2.99 to watch or $9.99 to buy.

• I was blown away with Robert Young. Superb and naturally at ease with the camera. Perfectly portrayed detached amused father yet totally in love and passionate with O'Hara character. Loved how he grabbed and kissed her on the doorstep as they were leaving for the dinner party at the home of his boss.

• Things should be put in perspective. It was much rarer to see very macho men in films of that period. Now a great many movies are very violent, very macho and the men fit that bill. Accordingly, through today's lens (influenced as it is by pop culture), that anyone like Clifton Webb is seen as obviously gay. People didn't necessarily think that at the time, though, as we lived in a world which didn't insist on stereotypical ideas of masculinity as much as we do now. Today, in real life, we are much more likely than in the 40s to presume that anyone like Tony Randall (who was straight) or Clifton Webb (who was gay) as gay.

• I love this movie.

• Good points r12 but do you think this was because the American public back then was literally too horrifed (or naive?) to even think about what homosexuals did with each other in the dark? Was it just easier to push those thoughts out of their collective minds?

• The leads definitely were in on the fun. Maureen O'Hara was gay-friendly, and Robert Young already played a scene in an earlier movie that featured Gene Raymond, a gay actor in real life. He light-heartedly posed a query to Raymond about carrying him across the threshold, (instead of his, Raymond's, female). [childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool] characters were on stage from the beginning. Clifton Webb was very believable as the father, in "Cheaper by the Dozen".

  Anonymous

• [15) What is a "childish epithet posted by a bigoted tool"?

  Anonymous

• It's not available on DVD on Amazon.

  so there

• R16, there seems to be this moderating tool here which automatically substitute the term “e{{eminate” with this silly phrase. Political correctness running amuck, if ever there was one.

• It's on youtube.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D0I-ZIRCbVEU%26feature%3Drelated

• I enjoy how R18 just assumes that DL has implemented that filter in some random, irrational fit of pique. I assume she uses the phrase, "you know how the gays are" on a regular basis. Welcome to Data Lounge, R18! You'll feel right at home here.

• Did Clifton Webb "mentor" Robert (RJ) Wagner?

• Goddess that was fun...Queensville Central.

  Mrs.%20Jesus

• [quote] Political correctness running amuck, Oh, dear. It's "amok"