Pictured #1 Screen heartthrob Tab Hunter after water-skiing at Watson Webb's Lake Arrowhead house. #2 Photo from the book Tab Hunter Confidential. #3 'Whatever Lola Wants,' Gwen Verdon's showstopper from Damn Yankees. #4 A pensive moment with Tony Perkins and Tab Hunter, from the book Tab Hunter Confidential. The book includes many great black-and-white photo classics.
In 1965 when I was still an adolescent, I worked with Tab Hunter at the Little Theatre on the Square, a well-known summer stock company in downstate Sullivan, Ill. I was several years away from losing my virginity and a decade away from coming out, but I would have done anything Tab Hunter asked me to do. Anything. He was 34, and he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. He had biceps and pecs and killer blue eyes and a dazzling smile.
Tab Hunter doesn't remember me—an anonymous apprentice who built the scenery, ran the show and fetched him the odd Coke from the corner drugstore—but he does favorably mention the Little Theatre in his new autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star ( written with Eddie Muller, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $24.95 ) .
In contrast to my innocence, Hunter reveals that he was sexually precocious He began his active sex life—always gay—at 14 in a darkened Los Angeles movie theater, and progressed quickly. Conflicted about his desires, the Catholic-reared Hunter confessed to his parish priest, only to earn a thundering condemnation. 'Through the latticework boomed the priest's voice, branding me the most despicable creature in the world. I was unfit to receive God's forgiveness, unfit to set foot in His house, unfit to live ... . I'd been taught to love God, to trust Him, to believe in His forgiveness. In minutes this priest had undone everything.'
It took Hunter years to reconcile with the Church, but much less time to reconcile with himself. In 1946 the underage ( 15 ) boy joined the Coast Guard and spent the next year cruising in more ways than one. On leave in Los Angeles he explored Hollywood gay bars; on leave in New York he soon was attending parties with the likes of Cole Porter and spending nights with older, wealthy gay men. 'It was like being handed the keys to a spectacular kingdom, one I'd never imagined,' he writes. 'But even as a teenager, I knew I didn't want to pay the cost of living there. I wasn't cut out to be a well-kept boy. The experience fascinated me, but it scared me.' Left unsaid is that Hunter became aware of his own physical beauty, which both compelled and repulsed him. Throughout his subsequent career, he bristled when regarded as another pretty face, and strove to find acting challenges.
When the Coast Guard discovered his true age, Hunter was discharged and returned to Los Angeles. There, agent and life-long friend Dick Clayton guided Hunter into the film business, connecting him to a leading gay Hollywood manager, Henry Wilson, who developed the careers of Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison among other good-looking young male stars. It was in Wilson's office in 1948 that 17-year-old Arthur Gelien ( Gah-LEEN ) was rechristened Tab Hunter.
It would be another four years before his career took off and not until 1954 that he landed a long-term Warner Brothers contract. He was natural in front of a camera, but that didn't mean he could act. He worked with acting coaches and voice instructors, listened to older and wiser actors and directors when he could ( he worked with hacks, too ) and envied those with real theater backgrounds, among them his lover, Anthony Perkins. Indeed, the subtitle of his book ( written with Eddie Muller ) is apt: The Making of a Movie Star. Hunter is the first to say his career was as manufactured as his name, based entirely on his looks, personality, sexual allure and natural athleticism. Talent was secondary.
The book is an easy and fast read, with lots of gossipy details and thumbnail portraits of famous people, and not just Hollywood figures. Hunter occasionally is whiney and defensive, but that probably goes with the territory of autobiography. He's occasionally catty and dishy, too, although he rarely seeks revenge. Those wanting juicy details about Hunter's sex life, who did what to whom and how often, will be disappointed. Hunter tells much, but he doesn't tell all. Yes, Hunter and Tony Perkins were lovers in the 1950s; yes, Hunter had a fling with Rudolph Nureyev; yes, he suggests that he had many casual sex partners over the years; yes, he was robbed by a one-night stand; still, Tab Hunter Confidential isn't really a kiss-and-tell book. Certain details are missing entirely, such as how the healthy, athletic Hunter avoided the Korean War draft ( his incomplete, underage Coast Guard stint wouldn't have exempted him unless, perhaps, he was dishonorably discharged ) .
Rather, the theme of this essentially earnest book—which is thoughtful rather than deep—is Hunter's search for an identity as well as for professional and personal security. It's not surprising considering that he was raised in single-parent home by an emotionally distant mother. Born in New York in 1931, the son of an abusive and soon-abandoned father ( legal birth name, Arthur Kelm ) , Hunter and his adored older brother were raised by their German immigrant mother mostly in Los Angeles. She worked hard during the Depression to keep her sons in lower middleclass comfort, and even paid for parochial school when she could afford it. But that's not the same as emotional comfort.
Hunter himself acquired his mother's work ethic, a love of the movies and a generally breezy attitude about life. Among other odd jobs, he mucked out a Los Angeles riding stable to indulge his passion for horses. Before he was 20, he was a championship horseman and a state championship figure skater, skills and disciplines that stood him in good stead as an actor.
I saw Hunter's professionalism myself at the Little Theatre on the Square, where he worked hard and performed well with little star attitude in the title role of Mister Roberts, the ever-popular play about Navy life during World War II. I also remember that the theater producer made arrangements for Hunter to ride each day. Over and over again in the book, he confirms the great solace riding has been for him.
But life in the Hollywood fish bowl wasn't that much of a treat. Hunter was a box office draw in the 1950s, yet never made star money under the old Hollywood studio system. He started at $250 week at Warner Brothers in 1954 and rose to $3,000 a week by 1959 when he bought out his contract for $100,000. He never lived lavishly and rarely kept one home for more than a few years, but he always found money to keep horses. There were plenty of bumps along the way, too, among them constant rumors about his homosexuality ( he'd been arrested at a gay party in 1950, and a scandal sheet dug it up in 1955 ) , the mental breakdown of his mother and the death of his career military older brother in Vietnam.
By the time I met him in 1965, his Hollywood star was waning, although I didn't realize it. The next 20 years were a struggle for him with lots and lots of summer stock and dinner theater, a disastrous fling on Broadway with Tallulah Bankhead, films in Europe and TV guest appearances. In addition to making his own living, he also paid all the bills for his mother and her leech of a best friend.
In 1980 when film director John Waters offered Hunter a week's shoot on a non-union film, Polyester, Hunter was almost 49 years old, tired of the grind and didn't give a shit what anyone thought. Against his agent's advice, he took the one-week shoot, with Divine as his leading lady. The success of Polyester, followed by the bigger success of Hunter's own screenplay, Lust in the Dust, revived his career and secured his finances. It also brought him his last and most enduring relationship with producer and partner Allan Glaser, nearly 30 years Hunter's junior.
Now a good-looking 74, a survivor of both a heart attack and a stroke, Hunter long ago acknowledged his sexual preference. Not surprisingly, he dislikes being identified as a gay icon almost as much as he disliked being a Hollywood icon, yet he doesn't dislike the attention or rewards iconic status has brought him. It's inconsistent except in the sense that you take him in all his complexity—indeed, take every individual as he or she is—and not put a single label on him.
Hunter had to find his way through adolescence and most of his adulthood with little guidance, few close friends ( although he values those few ) and no uncloseted role models. At an age when most kids are at college, he was forced publicly to hide who he was and learn the ropes of a business he was in by chance rather than inclination. Never a great talent ( which is not to say he lacked talent, as I witnessed myself ) , Tab Hunter nonetheless might have been a greater star if he'd been less independent; if he'd stuck it out in the studio system; if he'd done series TV; if his career instincts hadn't failed him when he passed up the chance to play Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler. Still, he voices few professional regrets.
'When I was young, things happened so fast, for so long, that I rarely took the time to examine my life, which sometimes lead to my taking good fortune—and good people—for granted ... . For a good stretch of time, my life was a kaleidoscope in which I moved relentlessly through a swirling mix of people, places and events. Later on, I moved just as fast, but down a pretty desolate, lonesome road,' he says. Perhaps his lack of introspection was a blessing. He never was compelled into psychoanalysis like Montgomery Clift, forced into an arranged ( if brief ) marriage like Rock Hudson, or driven to a reversal of sexual identity like his ex, Tony Perkins. He remained instinctively true to himself.
Tab Hunter Confidential is a breezy read, complete with numerous black-and-white photos, many of them showing a shirtless star in his prime. If you want to know Tab Hunter's 'type,' it would appear—from photos of those with whom he had long relationships—that he favors slender, dark-haired, boyish men.
But you might want to ask him yourself: he'll be signing books Thursday, Nov. 10, 5:30 p.m. at Borders, 150 N. State ( State and Randolph ) , ( 312 ) 606-0750.
