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Those who are perhaps too young to remember Tab Hunter should know that after
being paired with Natalie Wood in two films, he became Warner Brothers’ number-one
box-office movie draw (from 1955 to 1959). Before that, the publicity machine that worked
under the watchful eyes of the movie moguls at Warner Brothers had already made Tab a
teen idol via stories and pictures released to the most popular magazines of the day. And, in
the middle of his movie stardom, Tab Hunter – who’d never recorded anything and hadn’t
really considered doing so – released a recording (“Young Love”) that zoomed up the charts
to become the number-one song in the nation and that stayed number one for six weeks,
knocking another young fellow – Elvis Presley (“Too Much”) – from that coveted spot.
Then, just weeks later, Tab’s “B” side of the record (“Red Sails In The Sunset”) took a similar
climb up the recording charts. One could say that, before Elvis and before the Beatles, Tab
Hunter was the legitimate heir to Frank Sinatra’s screaming bobbysoxers.
Tab Hunter was young, blond, muscular,
handsome, self-effacing, and almost shy: the antithesis
really, of Elvis. Tab was a young man one could bring
home to meet the parents. Early, snarling, hip-swiveling,
long-haired, duck-tailed Elvis, if one can recall the
tabloid headlines of the day, was the devil’s spawn that
no self-respecting father would allow his daughter
anywhere near.
We are in the intimate living room of the home that
actor/singer and former teen idol Tab Hunter shares with
his longtime partner Allan Glaser. Tab is just back from his
daily routine of getting up near sunrise and driving to the
stable to tend to his horse.
The couple live in a George Washington Smith-
designed home in the foothills of Montecito. “Back
in the ‘fifties,” says Tab as we settle into inviting
but unostentatious upholstered chairs for our first
conversation, “it was part of the house next door, but
they cut it off and moved it over here.” The house is both
elegant and modest, befitting the personality of its owner.
The main house nearby is “still big, even with this
and another part of the building cut off from it,” Tab
says with a chuckle. “It’s comfortable,” he continues,
“and it’s like a business manager said to me years ago,
when I was looking at a house that I wanted to buy. He
looked at me – he was very conservative – and he said,
‘Just remember this, Tab: you can only be in one room
at a time.’”
Hunter turned 82 in July. He’s still that broad-
shouldered good-looking actor, and continues to display
the same sense of humor and benign bewilderment at
life’s twists and turns that served him so well during his
sixty-plus years in show business.
What follows is an edited transcript of our leisurely
conversations.
Q.
You’ve taken many chances in your career, which
was/is/has been both long and successful, such as doing live
television, riding horses in a western when perhaps it should
have been a stuntman on the back of that horse, agreeing to
co-star with a 300-pound transvestite…Why?
A.
I was doing a film in 1958 for [five-time Oscar
Conversations:
30
winter
|
spr ing
13-year-old Art Gelien in Los Angeles, circa 1944,
several years before being re-christened Tab Hunter
by his Hollywood agent