Tab Hunter - Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star

Praise for Tab Hunter Confidential

This bio might be the best work of [Tabs] career. He takes readers on a gleeful romp dotted with cameos ranging from Clint Eastwood to Roddy McDowall. Perhaps in homage to the genre hes skewering, Hunter... has an excellent sense of tabloid TV rhythm.

Entertainment Weekly

Hunter provides a mesmerizing account of his Candide-like journey through Hollywood.... [He] offers shrewd assessments of the studio moguls Jack Warner and Harry Cohn, as well as hilarious anecdotes about working with Natalie Wood, Rita Hayworth and Lana Turner.

The New York Times Book Review

[A] wry and unblinkered memoir.... With that golden hair and torso, the scrubbed skin and the jaw that could open cans, [Tab Hunter] was a whole Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue rolled into one packageexcept this package had a secret compartment.

The Washington Post

Theres enough juice in this book to satisfy the most hungry Hollywood fan.

USA Today

A good read, gracious and wryly self-deprecating.

The Seattle Times, Critics Top Picks

A page-turner.... Colorful.

San Francisco Chronicle

A sensitively told, self-aware, well-written account of a life filled with rags-to-riches stories... [by] a first-rate memoirist.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

His intelligent and spry, true to thyself attitude presents a positive reflection on having to deal with the stigma and unacceptance of being just who you are, while at the same time being the hottest thing in Hollywood.... The book is a heartfelt and realistic account of his life until now.

Buzz magazine

Surprisingly sincere and moving.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

An honest look at this workaholics life before and after the glory years.

The Boston Herald

His memoir is at all times intelligent and interesting.

The New York Observer

Few celebrity biographies chronicle tribulations, success, disappointments, and growth with such candor, charm, and lack of self-pity. The punchy, page-turning prose and terrific illustrations are worthy of the subject. It will make a great movie.

San Francisco Bay Area Reporter

Tab Hunter Confidential is the most cheerful portrait this journalist has ever encountered about what happens to a movie star when the spotlight clicks off.

National Post (Toronto)

Offers an emotionally engaging survivors tale that would move film audiences.

The Book Standard

Celebrity biography mavens of the baby-boomer generation will especially welcome this memoir.... [Hunters] private life was so well concealed that much of the information related in this heartfelt and candid autobiography will come as a surprise to his fans.... An engrossing tale of too much too soon, with a surprisingly happy ending.

Library Journal

A respectful and dignified autobiography.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An entertaining read.... Hunter writes freely, yet discreetly, about his many affairs of the heart.

Booklist

The 1950s heartthrob has penned a brave, surprising and sad memoir about depression (his mothers), repression (his homosexuality) and redemption (a career revival and meeting his partner of 20-plus years).... This is an illuminating, emotionally charged and important piece of Hollywoods hidden history.

Publishers Weekly

THE MAKING OF A MOVIE STAR

TAB HUNTER

with Eddie Muller

Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2005 by Tab Hunter. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, September 2006.
Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2005.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow.

Young Love, by Ric Cartey and Carole Joyner, 1956 Sony/ATV Songs LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, 8 Music Sq. West, Nashville, TN 37203.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are from the private collection of Tab Hunter.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hunter, Tab, 1931
Tab Hunter confidential : the making of a movie star / by Tab Hunter,
with Eddie Muller.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-466-0; ISBN-10: 1-56512-466-9 (HC)
1. Hunter, Tab, 19312. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited States
Biography. I. Muller, Eddie. II. Title.
PN2287.H82A3 2005
791.43028092dc22
[B] 2005045335

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-548-3; ISBN-10: 1-56512-548-7 (PB)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Paperback Edition

TAB HUNTERConfidential

I HATE LABELS.

Coming from me, thats a strong statement. Anyone who knows me will tell you Im a relentlessly positive person. I dont even like to use the word hate. Lifes too precious to waste time dwelling on the negative things we all experience.

But labels are something Ive unfortunately dealt with my whole life. Ive had so many slapped on me youd think I was a billboard, not a real person. Many of them were created by agents, producers, and public-relations types whose job was to turn me into a Movie Staranother label Ive never been comfortable with, even after all these years.

I was only a teenager, and Harry Truman was still in the White House, when some Hollywood marketing genius tried to stick me with the title the Sigh Guy. Not long afterward, I became the even more ludicrous Swoon Bait. After that, take your pick: the All-American Boy or the Boy Next Door or Hollywoods Most Eligible Bachelor. Hell, even my name is a label, attached to me by a man who believedcorrectly, I suppose, that Rocks and Rorys and Guys and Tabs cast a certain spell on the postWorld War II American imagination.

It was all show business, all a game. After several years as a starving freelancer, watching the decline of Hollywoods once-powerful studio system, I signed on as one of the last actors put under exclusive contract to a major studio. For five years I was ownedthe property of Warner Bros. For the most part, I did as I was told, and reaped the kind of money and fame that millions of starry-eyed kids dream about. I performed opposite real stars, like Lana Turner, Gary Cooper, Linda Darnell, Robert Mitchum, and Sophia Loren. Only a few years earlier, Id idolized them from my seat in the movie theater. Then in the blink of an eye, my namethe new one, the one I never likedwas above the title on my own pictures, and I was Jack Warners top money earner at the box office.

Tab Hunter truly was a Product of Hollywood. Thats one label Ill concede is completely accurate. As anybody trying to sell a product in this society will agreeits all about image. Whether its toothpaste, automobiles, or movie stars, the strategy for success is to deliver the right image to captivate your intended audience. My bosses were convinced that I was equipped with the kind of wholesome, photogenic face and physique that would set young hearts racing. I was packaged for those girls, and kept the smile in place despite one ridiculous nickname after another.

Picture it, if you can: One day Im a shy, withdrawn, insecure kid named Art Gelien who loves horses more than anything in the world. I wake up, and Im a larger-than-life matinee idol renamed Tab Hunter. When I go to the newsstand for the daily paper, my fresh-scrubbed face gleams from row after row of fan magazines, all trumpeting me as Hollywoods gift to American women.