in Tonight at 8.30 in 1936, and appeared again there the following year as Roger in Coward's production of Gerald Savory's comedy George and Margaret. During the Second World War he served in the armed forces. In the late 1940s, resuming his stage career, he acted and in the West End, on Broadway, and on tour in the US, the latter in Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy. He also directed. Later years In 1951 Webb played Polonius to the Hamlet of Alec Guinness at the New Theatre. The Times praised "the Polonius of Mr Alan Webb, always picking up in the thickening of senility the threads of his former astuteness and retaining a fair measure of his dignity", and The Tatler called Webb's performance "an adroit and amusing study of failing powers which occasionally find their former strength". At the Edinburgh Festival and on tour in the same year he played Henry Higgins in Pygmalion with Margaret Lockwood as Eliza. Webb's other stage roles during the 1950s included Sir Timothy Bellboys in John Whiting's A Penny for a Song (London, 1951), William Collyer in Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea (New York, 1952), Eggerson in T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk (Edinburgh and London, 1952), Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well and Marcus Andronicus in Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, Stratford-on-Avon, 1955), and three Shaw roles, Lord Summerhayes in Misalliance (Lyric, Hammersmith, 1956), Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara (Royal Court, London, 1958) and Mazzini Dunn in Heartbreak House (1959, New York). In the 1960s Webb appeared as Dudard in Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros, starring Laurence Olivier (Royal Court, 1960). With the Royal Shakespeare Company he played Gloucester in King Lear and Ernst Heinrich Ernesti in The Physicists. Later work included The Three Sisters at the Royal Court and Willy in Happy Days at the National Theatre in 1974. Cinema and television Webb made his film debut in Challenge to Lassie (1949), and went on to appear in such films as The Pumpkin Eater (1964), King Rat (1965); Chimes at Midnight (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), Women in Love (1969), Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and The Duellists (1977). He appeared several times on the BBC Play of the Month, Hallmark Hall of Fame and Play for Today, as well as popular television series Z-Cars, The Protectors,