ON Topic: Tab Hunter, RIP
Tab Hunter passed a few days ago. At 86. A long life, and for much of the last decades of it, an openly gay one.
His real name was Arthur Gelien(sp?) Whoever called him "Tab" added him to "Rock" as the archetypical phony baloney-named star of his era. But Rock Hudson was much bigger as a star, he had a fake name didn't hurt THAT much. Still, Rock and Tab, fifties archetypes. I'm reminded of "Dash Riprock." Was he on the Beverly Hillbillies.
Tab Hunter's connection to Psycho is Tony Perkins, and the documented contention that the two actors were, for a time around the making of Psycho, lovers. Call that gossip, but it has been corroborated, and it think it is meaningful to Hollywood circa 1960.
There is a photo that I find rather sly and funny of the two men on a studio "double date" sitting side by side to each other in theater seats, with pretty women on their arms. The women are the ostensible dates; but Tony and Tab are looking into each other's eyes, in on a very big joke. Funnier still: right-wing character guy Ward Bond stands over the two men, beaming.
In 1972, Tony Perkins and Tab Hunter were both in the cast of John Huston's "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," in cameos. I'm here to say that the two men, by then in their handsome late thirties/ early forties and with the longish hair of the era, both looked great. You can see why each man at least got a shot at stardom, even if it had faded by '72. They were great looking men.
Rumor has it that the filming schedule on Judge Roy Bean was drafted so that Tony and Tab weren't there at the same time. What was over, was over. Perkins would soon marry a woman; and reportedly lost his virginity(with a woman) to Victoria Principal on Judge Roy Bean in some sort of set-up job by Paul Newman that both Perkins and Principal spoke of warmly. Ah, Hollywood..Said one of the straight actors on Judge Roy Bean: "All of us straight guys were trying to land her, but Tony got her."
My special place for Tab Hunter is that he is in my favorite movie of 1958: Damn Yankees.(Yes, it beats Vertigo.) Tab was as big a star as he would ever be at that time; Warners chose him to be the "movie star" placed with the Broadway cast(as Doris Day had been in The Pajama Game.)
As "Shoeless Joe ," the forty-something insurance salesman reincarnated by the Devil(Ray Walston) as a 20-something baseball hitting prodigy, Hunter played his role as nice and innocent and kindly as could be. He resists the vamping of Lola(Gwen Verdon) the seductress sent by the devil to ruin him, and takes a room in the home of his still middle-aged wife, where he tries to comfort her as she mourns her missing old husband(HIM.)
It seems that every star of some stature gets SOME memorable movie, and Tab Hunter got Damn Yankees and, i guess, Battle Cry -- a "Marine movie" favorite of my military family members.
And somehow, Tab hung on after his 50's stardom ended. TV series, B movies, TV movies...even something with Divine for John Waters, I think.
And 86 is pretty good to make. Tony Perkins only made it to 60.
Which reminds me: in the summer of 1960 when Psycho hit movie houses, Tony Perkins was on the Boston summer stock stage in ..Damn Yankees! Perkins took the cast to a matinee of Psycho and said that night's Damn Yankees performance was subpar because: the other actors were scared of Tony and couldn't look him in the eyes, missed their cues.
Which reminds me: If Tony Perkins in 1960 could do Damn Yankees...could Tab Hunter circa 1960 have done Norman Bates? I'd say looks-wise, no(Tab had butch white-blond hair, kind macho). But ACTING-wise? Maybe. There's a lot of Norman Bates' shyness, niceness, politeness and sweetness in Tab Hunter's work as Shoeless Joe in Damn Yankees. Take a look at it sometime.
You might just see Norman.
RIP.