Golden boy

My second Cinetopia Film Festival movie was the documentary Tab Hunter Confidential. Tab Hunter was a Hollywood teen idol in the 1950s. He was so handsome, in a clean-cut farm boy manner, all the women swooned over him. Though his acting in his first couple of movies was quite bad, he soon became a pretty good actor and made lots of films. He branched into singing, made many albums, and had a song that topped the chart for six weeks. He was also a good equestrian and figure skater.

One little problem: he's gay.

The movie featured interviews of Hunter, who will be 84 next month. Towards the start of the film he says after so many years of having to be heavily closeted it was hard to talk about himself. But there was no need now to keep secrets. Besides, his tell-all book has been published.

In the 1950s under the studio system he signed a contract and became in public whatever the studio wanted him to be. If there was a bit of scandal, such as being at an all-male party raided by police (homosexual acts were illegal), the studio could squash the story. He would take various starlets out on dates, where he usually had a good time, though there were many times three people on the date – himself, the young woman, and the cameraman. Woman liked dating him because he was funny and they felt safe. Once or twice he thought of marriage to a woman he really liked, but realized marriage wouldn't be fair to her.

Towards the end of the '50s he became so popular his studio began loaning him to other studios. His studio would charge a high fee and pay Hunter his regular salary, with the studio pocketing the difference. That began to annoy Hunter and he went into debt and bought out his contract.

But he no longer had the studio to squash stories when scandal hit, and without the studio's protection reporters were eager for a salacious story. His career took a nosedive and he could only get work in the lowest of low-budget movies. That was followed by the dinner theater circuit.

His career had a resurgence after he played the lover of transvestite Divine in the John Waters' movie Polyester. He met his partner Allan Glaser when pitching the Western spoof Lust in the Dust. Their relationship has lasted over 30 years, even though Hunter is 30 years older.

IMDB has a good summary of his career.