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Nov. 9, 2005
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Tab Hunter Confidential’ Tells With Good Humor Successes and
Frustrations of a Studio-Created Movie Star
Reviewed by David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton, WV (HNN) – Tab Hunter is frank about why he wrote – with Eddie
Muller – “Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star” (Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill, 408 pages, $24.95, illustrated and indexed): He says:
"Better to get it from the horse's mouth, I decided, and not from some
horse's ass."
It’s an excellent turn of phrase, considering that Tab Hunter is an
accomplished horseman, competing in California and in the Virginia hunt
country when he was younger.
In fact the name young Arthur Gelien (born Arthur Kelm) chose was based on
types of show horses. He gave the studio – Warner Brothers -- a choice
between “hunter” and “jumper”! The name Tab Hunter was chosen by Henry
Willson, the agent who named Rock Hudson, Rory Calhoun and many other
straight and gay male sex symbols in Tinseltown.
Not until Page 351 do we learn that Tab Hunter’s father, Charles Kelm, was
Jewish. Hunter had failed to find his father or information about him in his
hometown of New York; years later, while Glaser was researching his own
family, Hunter succeeded in learning that his dad was much older than his
mother and had fathered two daughters with a previous wife. Wikipedia says
both Charles Kelm and Gertrude Gelien Kelm were Jewish, but Hunter says she
was Roman Catholic, the religion he practices today at the age of 74. He
lives in the Santa Barbara suburb of Montecito with his companion of many
years, Allan Glaser, a film producer like Hunter himself.
This is a rousing, good-humored tell-all book that’s a good introduction to
the lifestyles of the gays and straights in Hollywood. Hunter and his good
friend — and sometime lover – Anthony Perkins would double date with
starlets chosen by them or by the studio. Studios and aspiring actors worked
hard to conceal homosexuality in their marquee stars.
Teen-age star Natalie Wood (1938-1981) was a favorite with Hunter, who truly
enjoyed the company of a sprightly and intelligent woman seven years his
junior. Another frequent date, was Debbie Reynolds, an actress a year
younger than Hunter. In a twist of fate only Hollywood could produce, Hunter
appeared in “Dark Horse,” the 1992 movie he wrote and produced with Glaser,
with Natalie’s daughter Natasha Gregson Wagner, who very much resembled her
mother.
Hunter describes in considerable detail his complex relationship with an
older woman, Joan Cohn, widow of Harry “King” Cohn of Columbia Pictures. She
was also friendly with and was married briefly to Laurence Harvey, the
A-list British actor who starred in “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Butterfield
8,” and “Room at the Top.” Harvey comes across as a bit of a rotter in
Hunter’s telling – living in real time the character he played in the latter
two movies.
Gertrude, Art and Walt Gelien left New York City for a life in California,
where Art became interested in horses and ice skating. He became a teen idol
as the studios were being battered by television. He and his contemporaries
and younger stars like Troy Donahue and Pat Boone (born in 1934) were
contract players often loaned out to other studios – to the great profit of
the studio.
After a more than respectible early career with movies like “Battle Cry,”
”The Burning Hills” and “Damn Yankees” – a recording of a hit song “Young
Love” in 1957 that outsold Elvis and an appearance with Charlton Heston and
Charles Bickford on the very first episode of TV’s live “Playhouse 90” in
October 1956 – he began a downward slide. Before he was 30, his career was
virtually over as an actor in a town that chews them up quickly. Troy
Donahue (1936-2001) became the next Tab Hunter, only to be chewed up and
spat out the same way.
He made movies in Europe, including several “spaghetti westerns,” and became
a star to a new generation with roles in movies by Baltimore indie director
John Waters: “Lust in the Dust” and “Polyester”, both co-starring
transvestite actor Divine (born Harris Glen Milstead), a high school
classmate of Waters. In the 1970s and 1980s he was a frequent guest star on
TV shows like “CHiPs” and “McMillan and Wife”; he was also a regular on the
dinner theater circuit throughout the nation.
Hunter is frank about his mother’s mental illness that may have been
exacerbated by a marriage to an abusive husband. Walt Gelien enlisted in the
navy and died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1965. Gertrude Gelien
underwent electroshock therapy and was supported until her death by Hunter,
who himself suffered both a heart attack and a stroke.
Hunter and his co-author have written a book that belongs on the shelves of
anyone interested in Hollywood in the waning days of the studio system. It
has many anecdotes about the actors and actresses Hunter worked with or new,
including James Dean, Sal Mineo, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Linda Darnell,
Angie Dickinson, Van Heflin (a favorite of Hunter’s because of his
consummate professionalism); Tallulah Bankhead and Fred Astaire, among many
others.
Among his almost 50 films – he made only ONE surfing movie, “Ride the Wild
Surf” -- are:
• Saturday Island aka Island of Desire (1952)
• Gun Belt (1953)
• The Steel Lady (1953)
• Return to Treasure Island (1954)
• Battle Cry (1955)
• The Burning Hills (1956)
• Damn Yankees (1958)
• That Kind of Woman (1959)
• Operation Bikini (1963)
• Ride the Wild Surf (1964)
• The Loved One (1965)
• Judge Roy Bean (1972)
• Polyester (1981)
• Lust in the Dust (1985)
• Dark Horse (1992)
Publisher’s web site: www.algonquin.com
