Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Beverly Hills, 
1948 

Sitting Pretty (1948)

With his attitude of thinly-veiled disdain, actor Clifton Webb was “a blast of asexual sophistication during Hollywood’s testosterone-fueled postwar epoch,” according to Turner Classics. It could also be said that he was an integral part of the social scene. Although Webb was often cast as a family man, he lived in Beverley Hills with his mother Maybelle, an uninhibited Auntie-Mame type. Together, they threw some of Tinseltown’s most memorable parties. One such affair was held on July 1, 1948, a few months after the release of the film Sitting Pretty, a comedy for which Webb would receive his second Oscar nomination.  Although the guest list is a “Who’s Who” of the movie industry at the apex of its golden age, there is one important name that is missing.