Confessions of a Teenage Heartthrob

Tab Hunter was a movie star.

"Who?" you ask. "Tab Hunter? What movies was he in?"

He was in Damn Yankees (1958), and Polyester (1981) and... uhm... well... uhm...



The new documentary on Netflix Tab Hunter Confidential is a good reminder that not all movie stars of the 1950's were in movies that we remember.

Tab Hunter (nee Arthur Kelm) was a young, blonde California he-god who in 1950 strolled onto the Warner Brothers lot and for the next ten  years or so was one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. There wasn't a girl's bedroom (and some boys) that didn't have a picture of the grinning sun-kissed boy on their walls. His image was breathtaking. The wide shining smile and the large blue eyes were truly unique- able to project that special brand of Fifties wholesomeness that the era thrived on.

He starred in countless films playing soldiers, sailors, and boys next door, but was never able to land in the kind of movies that would make him a serious actor like contemporaries James Dean or Rock Hudson. That didn't matter to the public. They didn't need him to be serious. They wanted him to smile tenderly and sing goofy love songs in their ears.

When Hunter moved to television he played more complex parts- but those roles are mostly lost to the tapeless ether. He would re-emerge in 1981 in the retro-fetish universe of John Waters. It was a brief resurgence, ending with Hunter giving up acting altogether to relax with his beloved horses on his California ranch.

Hunter in Confidential takes us through the evolution from young man to pin-up, to actor, to has-been, to nostalgia favorite, personally spilling the beans on his life and career. He gets the big shocking news out of the way in the first moments. Hunter is a homosexual. Closeted, Hunter was unable to be the person he wanted to be- but that didn't stop him from having relationships with figure skaters, ballet dancers, and perhaps most infamously, with rising star at the time, Anthony Perkins.

Hunter is reluctant to discuss his gay life. Perhaps being naturally shy, or just holding on to his PR training that would never allow him to discuss such things, Hunter relates the love stories of a couple beaux but in such a matter-of-fact way, that he appears emotionally disconnected from his past loves- and his gayness. 

While he admits his affair with Perkins, he doesn't open up about what that meant for him emotionally. To be head-over-heels in love with a beautiful, sensitive star like Perkins, and not be able to tell anyone- not be able to fully live a life together. To have to go on a PR double-date with aspiring starlets so that you can go out with your lover.  To be told you are forbidden to see him again because it would ruin both of your careers. 

There is an emotionally intimate story here- but either the passage of time, intense privacy, or residual shame prevent Hunter from fully opening up about it. 

I applaud Hunter's strength to tell his story the way he wanted to. There is a difference between mere confession and embracing our rich gay history. It is times like now that we need LGBT stories not to be simply told but to be celebrated.