Week of November 24, 2005, Issue #527
FRONT
Three Dollar Bill
By Richard Burnett
When I learnt a couple years ago that 1950s matinee idol Tab Hunter was going
to come out in his forthcoming memoirs, I told my friend author Felice Picano
who’d had lunch with the onetime Hollywood heartthrob. “He’s
a wonderful man,” Felice told me, which only made me want to interview
Tab Hunter even more.
Well, I finally got to blab with Hunter last week, the day after he returned
home to Santa Barbara after a cross-country U.S. book tour to promote his bestselling
memoirs Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star (Algonquin Books).
I can’t tell you enough how terrific Hunter’s autobiography is,
an immensely frank and entertaining read that, Hunter proudly tells me, has
just been ranked Amazon’s number-two pick for best books of 2005.
“I thought about writing my memoirs a long time ago but didn’t have
the guts,” Hunter explains. “Then when I heard someone else was
going to write a book, I said what the hell. I hate talking about my private
life but I had to do it (come out). I had to be fair.”
Tab Hunter Confidential tells the quintessential Hollywood fairy tale of a gorgeous
young kid—in this case a young Art Gelien—who was named Tab Hunter
by Henry Willson, the (in)famous Hollywood agent who also created Rock Hudson
and Rory Calhoun, sex symbols who became known as Harry Willson’s boys.
Along the way, Hunter publicly dated the likes of Debbie Reynolds and, by the
age of 25, was a number-one box-office draw who’d even had a number one
hit single with the song “Young Love.”
“The studio system was an incredible thing,” Hunter recalls. “I
was very fortunate to be part of that era. Jack Warner conducted his symphony
as he saw fit. He had a whole publicity wing to build you. It’s a totally
different ball game today. They’re corporate now. You can’t compare
old and new [Hollywood].”
“Even in Hunter’s heyday, people joked about his synthetic persona
the way we joke today about teenybopper acts like Jesse McCartney and Ashlee
Simpson,” Salon recently noted. “When Hunter’s fame began
to dim, he resorted to cheesy B-movies with titles like Operation Bikini and
an endless grind of dinner-theatre engagements that helped him pay the rent
and support his ailing mother. For all that, Hunter seems astonishingly free
of bitterness.”
Today, Hunter is the happiest he’s ever been—and being out of the
closet has a lot to do with it. Back in the 1950s, when homosexuality was still
illegal, Hunter led a double life, though he never went as far as his onetime
boyfriend of two years, Hollywood immortal Anthony Perkins, who even got married
and had a family.
“I was a little frightened of being blackmailed but you have to stay your
course as best you can,” says Hunter. “Jack Warner never ever said
a word to me. Whereas Paramount said words to Tony. [Director] George Abbot
didn’t want me in Damn Yankees because I was too gay. When George fired
me, Jack said, ‘Wait a minute, I bought Damn Yankees for Tab Hunter.’
When I was in [the scandal rag] Hollywood Confidential, Jack told me, ‘Today’s
headlines, tomorrow’s toilet paper.’ That was the closest he ever
came to talking to me about my sexuality. But, yes, there were two personas—I
was Tab Hunter, no question about that.”
Still, Hunter, now 74, did not want to go down in history like Perkins, who
died of AIDS in 1992. “When Tony’s [autobiography] came out, I tell
ya, a lot of it was bunk. Everybody puts their spin on stuff.” As Hunter
writes in his own memoirs, “Nothing came between Tony and his career.”
Hunter is stunningly honest in Tab Hunter Confidential, which is chock full
of personal anecdotes about everyone from Tallulah Bankhead (“She became
a caricature of herself”) and Rudolf Nureyev (“I felt terrible when
he died of AIDS”) to Gary Cooper and John Wayne.
Some of his kindest words are reserved for Divine, the late drag queen immortalized
in the films of director John Waters. Waters, who cast Hunter opposite Divine
in Polyester and Lust in the Dust, recently said of Hunter, “Making out
with Divine, that’s beyond the bravery of coming out.”
When I bring that up, Tab cracks, “When John asked me, ‘Do you want
to kiss a 350-pound transvestite?’ I said, ‘I’ve kissed worse.’”
These days Hunter, a staunch Catholic, lives with his partner of over two decades,
Allan Glaser, and Hunter has been quoted by the gay press as being against gay
marriage. But when I question Hunter about that, he replies, “I think
[gay marriage] depends on the person. It’s their choice. God gave us a
wonderful thing called free will. Let’s hope we make good choices.”
V