Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star

Henry Willson, famous and infamous agent and creator of stars, named Tab Hunter. He also tagged Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun, and other young sex symbols. Not all of them were gay, but they came to be known as Harry Willson's boys. (Another book about this time and subject is The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson by Robert Hofler.) Tab Hunter was completely manufactured. He even speaks of himself in the third person in the book.

Before he was 26, Hunter had hit the trifecta: he was a movie star, had a hit single in "Young Love," and was on the first live production of Playhouse 90 on television. His future success looked assured, but such was not the case. It was either feast of famine for the next few years. He was never a solid A-list leading man, but had his share of famous co-stars and leading ladies nevertheless.

While he was struggling with his true identity and trying to stay afloat financially, his mother had a complete breakdown and he was forced to hospitalize her in less than ideal conditions. This also had to be a secret from the fans. His friendships, both intimate and platonic, kept him going, as well as his deep faith in Catholicism. Yes, Catholicism. Tab Hunter has his own unique pact with God.

The book is filled with many pictures of Tab and his friends and with anecdotes about the stars: Tallulah Bankhead on her last legs, fuzzy and outrageous; Linda Darnell's kindness; John Wayne's macho strutting; Fred Astaire's humility; Van Heflin's professionalism, and on and on. This is sheer heaven for any movie fan. His relationship with Tony Perkins is noted, as is his liaison with Olympic figure skater Ronnie Robertson. (Tab, in addition to being an actor, singer and horseman was also an accomplished figure skater.) When the good parts disappeared after he left Warner Brothers, he went on tour with the Everly Brothers. Much later, now fully "out" he joined Divine in two John Waters movies: Polyester and Lust in the Dust, both cult classics. After suffering a stroke and a heart attack, he is now enjoying life in Santa Barbara with his longtime companion, Allan Glaser. As Tab succinctly puts it regarding his story: "Better to get it from the horse's mouth, I decided, and not from some horse's ass." --Valerie Ryan

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

His is as amazing on paper as he is in real life!, 2008-05-16
I am going to do this review on a personal level, instead of going into the content of the book. Why? Because after you read this book, you will see that Tab is made from a different mold than most people who have made it to Hollywood. He is more of an average person than the movie star so many have grown to enjoy. I am lucky to say...Tab Hunter is an amazing guy and friend. My mother and Tab became friends a few years back and I have gotten to know and love him through the eyes of my mom, who has since passed on. He is charming and sincere. So it was not a surprise to me that his book would be anything but absolutely wonderful. From the moment you pick up this book, you feel as though you are there...experiencing this incredible life through Tab's eyes. It will touch you in many ways. It is true and raw. The style in which Tab tells his life story allows the reader to feel the uninhibited emotions, joys and turmoils of his career. The pictures are subperb. I won't go into details of the book. That would spoil it for the ones who have not taken the opportunity to experience this fabulous read.
Once you have read this book, you will become to know and love Tab. So don't delay. You must add this to your collections of favorites today!



2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Utterly Charming, 2008-03-31
As movie stars' autobiographies go, this is one of the best I've ever read. Tab (a/k/a Art Gelien) is completely charming and open about his life, but what makes it truly wonderful is his guileless, disingenuous approach to himself. He frequently refers to himself in the third person because he's never truly believed that he IS that person. He makes me wish I had the chance to meet him. As a gay man myself, born about five years after him, I can relate to the obstacles he faced back in the uptight 1950s. Highly recommended.


2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

A Dogpaddle in the Shallow End, 2008-02-16
Tab Hunter's ethics seem to have been shaped to fit his impulses in this well-written, well-paced autobiography. He takes us for a swim in the shallow end of the pool but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy the water.

Hunter is a proud and practicing Catholic, even after being chased out of the church by a torrent of abusive language after confessing to homosexual thoughts when he was young. This passage, one of the most startling in the book, makes you wonder why Hunter would ever want to return. But he does, saying he decided to imagine that God loves him just like everyone else. He has always been attracted to the pomp and ceremony of his religion and learns to comparmentalize the way he feels about things. To him, it is a practical matter. Not an ethical one. If they disapprove of what I am, I will change to suit their expectation of me, at least on the outside.

This of course is basic training for a career in acting.

From his late teens to his late twenties, Arthur Gelien (Hunter) is alternately groomed and groped up the ladder of success by a succession of drooling agents and producers who can't resist his golden good looks and the money to be made from them. A willing commodity, Hunter hooks up with the notorious Henry Willson, Rock Hudson's agent. Rock Hudson, Rip Torn, Reb Wheeler, Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter. Willson was famous for giving his actors these odd names, and for taking a personal interest in them as well. Hunter eagerly follows Willson's plans for him.

The rumor mill had it that Henry, a particularly homely gentleman, slept with all his clients. Hunter doesn't go there in this book, though admits to taking a cruise with him to Bermuda (hmmmm). Later, the two men have a permanent break when Hunter suspects Willson of giving him up to Confidential Magazine to protect Rock Hudson, a story that is most-likely true.

Perhaps it's the fact that Hunter has grown so used to repressing his feelings that the reader finds himself reading a travelogue of facts and tidbits devoid of much human emotion. "These things happened to me. Here they are."

We get the whole story, and it's a pretty good one, but we never really make it into the deep end of the pool. It's like having a perfectly satisfactory meal. You can't really complain about it, but it doesn't leave you either raving about the food or wanting any more.

I don't blame some of these older actors like Tab Hunter and Richard Chamberlain for waiting until their 70's to "come out" with their autobiographies after spending their careers staying in. Of course, it's career suicide for a gay man to come out, even now. Women all over the world have a stake in the actors they turn into romantic idols, and they want them to be straight in real life too, not just on the screen.

I found the biography of Tony Perkins, Split Image, to be an interesting bookend to Tab Hunter's reminiscenses. Perkins entered intensive pschotherapy to come to terms with his conflicted sexual desires. Hunter dislikes psychiatry and endless bouts of self-investigation.

We get an image of Tony Perkins as being quite the kinkster in Split Image, which made me wonder what Tab Hunter left out. A lot, it seems. He focuses on his career and "studying his craft" even after most actors his age have mastered it. As career options dwindle at the end of his twenties, Hunter gently steps off the Hollywood merry-go-round and heads for Europe.

Tab Hunter is at least honest in the depiction of the positive and negative reviews of his work. He is most often described as being wooden. But he accomplished a lot in his career. He knocked Elvis Presley off the top of the charts with his insipid pop song "Young Love," and he was adored by millions of young girls around the world. Without a doubt, Tab Hunter was one of the top pop idols of the 50's.

While I would have liked a bit more candor in his big sell-out, tell-all moment, I was satisfied by the story he told. It was interesting and well done. I don't know if this is due to the input of Mr. Hunter or of his writer, but the result was a readable, enjoyable portrait of a conflicted teen idol and his hidden life.


3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Heights Never Attained: "Portrait Of An Accomplished Life That Might Have Been" By Jerry Pezzella (Bridgeport, Connecticut), 2008-01-20
This review is from: Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making Of A Movie Star

Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making Of A Movie Star, By Tab Hunter and Eddie Muller, is, in my opinion, a glossed over version about the story of an inflexibly wooden, dispassionate, and emotionally bankrupt actor whose main contribution, to the many movies he appeared in, was merely to serve as decorative window dressing - and nothing more.

To be fair, he did appear in a handful of A-List movies. But even in those roles, in which another young actor might have brilliantly excelled, Mr. Hunter's performances were always sadly lacking in both substance and meaning.

No doubt, his stoic upbringing had much to do with his inability to openly and effectively express the true depth of his innermost thoughts and feelings.

Having been brought up by a formidably stern, strong-willed mother, who, we are told, dearly loved both her sons (Tab and his adored older brother Walter) she, nonetheless, never really offered either one of them anything that might even tangibly resemble any sort of emotional stability. Neither, we are also told, did she ever openly show them any real affection. Apparently, this factor proved to be most instrumental in helping to create the impenetrable wall of reserve that Tab Hunter had built around himself very early in life, and which he conveniently used as a means to keep himself separated from the rest of the world.

Whatever the reasons involved, however, the sad fact remains that it greatly inhibited his earlier growth as a substantial human-being, and heavily contributed in his never being able to realize the full potential that he later might have aspired to as an actor.

This becomes increasingly clear when one is confronted with the undeniable truth concerning the severe limitations of his acting abilities - and by the painful realization that this one-dimensional actor was only capable of re-creating, time and time again, the same old familiar characterization of just being himself - Tab Hunter.

Throughout his entire career, he never once truly captured the subliminal spark that would have ignited within him all the necessary warmth, and sincerity of passion that is so vitally essential in bringing total believability to the elusive art of great dramatic acting. It was almost as if he was pre-ordained (by the limited range of his emotional output) to forever just remain the perennial blond surfer that he so tellingly portrayed in "Ride The Wild Surf."

If Tab Hunter should ever wonder why his acting career was so shortlived - perhaps the answer is a relatively simple one. The only thespians who endure the ages are those who infuse their acting by reaching far down into the very depths of their heart and soul and bring forth, through the magic of their artistry, an astonishing new interpretation on the age old verities of life that is an absolute revelation to watch. Those who are there merely for adornment purposes only - fade away after a brief time, and are completely forgotten.

Mr. Hunter's homosexuality, an important part of his life that has helped shape him into the person that he really is, is never fully addressed here. The several male lovers that he has had throughout the years, including some outstandingly famous ones like Anthony Perkins, Rudolph Nureyev, and ice-skating champion Ronnie Robertson, are mentioned, but barely. They appear as rather sketchily drawn presentations - in a matter-of-fact same sort of a way as footnotes that might appear at the bottom of a printed page. Here he is, in reality, being the same emotionally unresponsive person that so faithfully represented the trademark performances that he usually gave on screen.

It was always a no-strings attached, no commitment type of relationship that he usually shared with most of these men, conveniently affording him the option of being able to unceremoniously cut all existing ties with them whenever another more attractive prospect came along.

Because of the incredibly good looks that he had been endowed with, one gets the feeling that most of these men were merely conquests that he felt he could have just for the taking.

Although a warm, friendly and outgoing personality weren't exactly his forte, I'm sure there were other less visible attributes that more than certified his credentials as being a card carrying member of the human race.

Being an independent, self sufficient person was an admirable trait that had been successfully instilled in him by his mother, a stalwart woman, who, during very rough times, literally raised both boys by herself after having escaped from the clutches of a brutally abusive husband. Another admirable trait was loyalty. Loyalty to his mother, a woman he had often been at odds with, by vowing to support and care for her until the very end - which, I might add, was dutifully accomplished. To further enhance his humanistic resume, Mr. Hunter also has a genuine love for animals - especially dogs and horses. Horses, predominantly - a love for the animal that his brother Walt had helped to cultivate within him. Anybody who religiously vows to care for a parent (and actually does so) and has a deep, respectful and caring love for animals, certainly makes them alright in anyone's book - especially mine.

There is one touching, memorable moment in the book that literally shines with the true spark of heartfelt humanity. It happened during a horse jumping show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Poised on his horse, and waiting to be called into the ring, Mr. Hunter was approached by a soldier, who, after inquiring if he was Arthur Gelien (Tab's real name) proceeded to soberly inform him that his beloved brother Walt, at age 35, had been killed in action in Vietnam. Dazed by the tragic, unexpected news, Tab somehow managed to go through with the show, winning the event in honor of his brother's memory. Later, alone in the stall of the horse he had ridden, he completely broke down into tears and sobbed uncontrollably. Evidently, Walt was about the only person in the world that he truly ever did love with his whole heart and soul.

The one thing that bothers me most about Tab Hunter is that he had all the opportunity in the world to try and become a better actor - but, instead, chose to squander it all away by not striving hard enough to put himself in touch with the vast reservoir of untapped human emotions that could have made him a far greater actor than merely being the recipient of an empty, superficial type of glamour fame that was only too briefly enjoyed.

There is much in this book that should be of considerable interest to the Hollywood buff. The authors have done a remarkably fine job in vividly re-creating the portrait of a particular time and place, and accurately describe, whether intentionally or not, the dizzying, merry-go-round existence of those celebrities viciously caught up in a whirlwind vacuum of self-idolatry and indulgence. We are also offered an insider's look into the workings of motion picture studios, the people who run them, and the rather dubious methods that are used in the hiring of what particular stars, for what particular movies, and for what particular reasons. In most instances, needless to say, inside politics always plays an important role.

Fascinating as these insights tend to be, it still doesn't quite overshadow the importance of the bigger picture here. In the final analysis, one comes away from this book with the sad conclusion that a bright light has been allowed to shine down, perhaps too brightly, upon an acting life that, at best, has been considerably less than stellar.

At the end of the book, Tab Hunter writes, and I quote: 'TODAY I AM HAPPY to be "forgotten". I can go anywhere and for the first time in my adult life be unrecognized'.

I pray that this is indeed true, and sincerely wish for him everything that is only the very best that life has to offer.


3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent Read, 2007-10-04
This books is an excellent read. Not overly familiar with the subject or his career, I still greatly enjoyed reading about Tab Hunter's varied experiences in the last years of the dying Hollywood studio system. Hunter got a lot of breaks because he was good looking, then experienced hard times as he aged out of the pretty-boy phase of his career. His persistence in the face of this drastic fall from grace is impressive - he certainly served his time in the dinner theater circuit. His willingness to take chances and to live his life his way without advertising his personal beliefs is admirable. Also nice was his discussion of the loves of his life, male and female, without coming across as a kiss-and-tell kind of guy. Best part, the sense of humor behind the narrative makes even the negative events interesting to read about. I will definately order some of his movies he describes in the book as I feel he gives a fair assessment of their quality.

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