The Boy Next Door (썸남, SseomNam, translated to English as Some Guy) is a revolutuonary BL Seri ("It's not a BL seri") om Korea, a untry not known to have a lot of gay ntent ("It's not gay ntent") featurg two neighbors who fall love ("No, no, no... we aren't love") and have...
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TAB HUNTER: HOW HOLLYWOOD'S BOY NEXT DOOR BEME A GAY IN
The actor, who died on Sunday at the age of 86, kept his sexualy a secret at a time when the dtry wasn’t ready for an openly gay heartthrob * the boy next door is gay *
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.
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.