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I take the dogs down to the beach with our friend Annie Carty. We walk the beach and let
the dogs run and all that. The two whippets are twelve and four years old, named Hattie
and Olivia.
After that, I have a bite of breakfast, go to the barn up at my friend, Mary Jo
England’s, where I keep the one mare that I bred. I turn my mare out for about an hour,
then I go and have a bite of lunch, mostly at Café Luna in Summerland – Dan, the owner,
is great – that or Stacky’s, one or the other. We bring our dogs there and create our own
little dining room out on the patio. And then I go back to the barn and give my mare
supplements and either ride her or give a lesson to my friend Hilary Burkemper, who is
a three-day-event rider. She has a mare that she keeps out of town. She’s been riding my
mare for about a year. I helped her when we went to the Santa Barbara National Show.
My mare hadn’t shown in four years. Hilary picked up
some nice ribbons and that was good.
In the afternoon I fix myself a drink (sometimes
a little vodka on the rocks with a splash of Vermouth;
sometimes some wine) as I watch Bill O’Reilly. I go back
and forth between Fox and CNN so I can get both sides
of the story.
Do you have favorite restaurants?
I like Tre Lune, Paradise Café, and Louie’s at the
Upham Hotel, but we mostly eat at home and have
people over. The great thing about living in Montecito is
that everybody is close. Nobody is more than four or five
minutes away. And, you can eat outside.
You can be as quiet as you want to be here, or be as
social as you want to be. You really have a choice.
And, this interview would not be complete without
at least touching upon the gay life you secretly lived as a
supposedly “straight” matinee idol.
I only wrote about [my sexuality] in the book
because when Allan told me that some shmuck was
going to be doing a book on me and said, “Look, they
could put all kinds of crap in there,” I decided I’d rather
they get it from the horse’s mouth and not from some
horse’s ass.
Did you live in fear of being exposed?
In the early 1950s, even just a taint of
homosexuality would or could have crushed your career.
So you spent at least some sleepless nights worrying
about the rumors that were out there. Did you come up
with some kind of counteraction or response?
Well, I didn’t. What I did was totally withdraw. If
things did come out, whether it would be
Confidential
magazine or any kind of rumors, I hated that; it really
bothered me because I lived a very quiet life. When I
wasn’t working in films, I was out at the barn all the
time. Anything to get away from Hollywood. I had
a lot of friends, but they weren’t necessarily in the
industry.
Conversations:
Tab arrives back in the United States
on the Queen Elizabeth a star, after
completing
Island Of Desire
in 1952