Alan Webb

Alan Webb was an English actor best known for his stage work, though he appeared in many films and television programs as well. Born in York in 1906, he gave up the idea of a naval career for the theater and made his first professional stage appearance in 1924 with the Lena Ashwell Players. With the Liverpool Repertory Company he took leading parts, among them Mole at the first staging of Toad of Toad Hall. He created roles for A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and T. S. Eliot, and was in nine of the ten short plays of Coward's Tonight at 8.30. His film debut came with Challenge to Lassie (1949), and later pictures included The Pumpkin Eater (1964), King Rat (1965), Chimes at Midnight (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970) and The Duellists (1977). In 1951 he played Polonius opposite Alec Guinness's Hamlet, a performance that won critical praise. He died in 1982.