Tab Hunter: how Hollywood's boy next door beme a gay in | Tab Hunter | The Guardian

Contents:

• TAB HUNTER: HOW HOLLYWOOD'S BOY NEXT DOOR BEME A GAY IN
• WORLD GAY MEN BE REN MEN
• A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN

TAB HUNTER: HOW HOLLYWOOD'S BOY NEXT DOOR BEME A GAY IN

Cast & crewUser reviews2012Unrated1h 24mA gay man fds himself torn between two sgle lovers who happen to be father and son. A gay man fds himself torn between two sgle lovers who happen to be father and son. A gay man fds himself torn between two sgle lovers who happen to be father and productn, box office & pany PhotosMore like thisReview An Affair to FetIf you're lookg for grty realy, social signifince or thought-provokg dialogue, this movie fely should be story is improbable and ridiculo, but I'd say the first 80% of the movie is dly amg...

A blon, square-jawed and wholome symbol of mid-century Amerin masculy, Hunter, born 1931 as Arthur Gelien, was gay but kept his sexualy a secret for the bulk of his reer, until g out his 2005 tobgraphy Tab Hunter Confintial: The Makg of a Movie Star.

”A product of an era that was famoly hospable to gay entertaers, Hunter kept up secret romanc wh film star Anthony Perks and figure skater Ronnie Robertson as movie studs trotted him out alongsi screen sirens Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds, wh whom he’d go on pretend dat. But not before an article Confintial, the bimonthly gossip rag om which Hunter’s memoir borrows s name, reported on the then 24-year-old’s volvement an arrt at a “limp-wristed pajama party” where other gay mal were attendance.

WORLD GAY MEN BE REN MEN

The article, Hunter felt, suated he’d been party to a “gay y”, a mor that might have torpedoed his reer given the ntemporaneo moral panic around homosexualy and the “lavenr sre” that led to mass firgs. But what would revalize his reer earnt was a phone ll om John Waters, the transgrsive gay film-maker whose mpy sensibily hadn’t yet been fully embraced beyond midnight moviegoers. But, s Insi Baseball approach to revealg the ner workgs of Hollywood before, durg and after the stud era, is a remarkably sightful, nfint acunt of and by one of Hollywood’s first gay movie stars, a label by which the famoly self-effacg Hunter would surely be ath, though, Tab Hunter’s legend won’t fa.

The 2015 documentary adapted om his memoir, which n be seen on Netflix, helped her a wave of disurse about the ills of the stud era – homophobia, misogyny and abe among them – a topic that was revised last year Fd, the fict televisn reuntg of the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

But there is a kd of poetic jtice that a man who spent much of his life the shadows lived long enough to see his forbidn romance veloped as a movie, one produced, as ought to be, by two openly gay men. Was she accg me of turng her hband gay? Like the time he told me he had gone on a porn se to see how gay men “do .

A HANDY GUI TO ALL GAY MEN

I’ve known upl, gay and straight, who were open relatnships.

The steam room and sna at my lol Y served as a kd of after-work social club for men who were gay ― and for those who had wiv and kids. I knew a gay imprar when I lived San Francis the 1980s.