esrosedotblog

KEEPING TABS

I have finished

Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star.

It is pretty good.

A lot of 'and then I acted in....' kind of stuff but he had a very very busy career.

What is nice is that he shows the arc of his coming out as a gay man which is very interesting to me. He never really hid. No fake marriages and so on.

He played the studio dating game but that goes on with all the stars, the het and the homo, down to today!

They are a hot item for the duration of the picture promotion and then break up. Look at Bennifer.

We were with a 30 something friend this weekend and I mentioned the book. He didn't have a clue who Tab Hunter was or is!

Shocking. The lack of fundamentals in the coming generations of gay men.

I didn't go on about how, later in his career, with tongue firmly in cheek, Hunter was able to take his original stud-star status and squeeze it for all it was worth with Divine; the infamous, crossdressing Glen Milstead.

Polyester was a John Waters film and Lust in the Dust, a hilarious putdown of the texy-mexy-sorta spaghetti western, that Hunter wrote himself.

Anyway. It is a happy book. He did a lot of things. He was naturally endowed with the looks and charisma and lacked, by his own admission, any training as an actor. He went ahead anyway.

I enjoyed it. It would be fun to read even if you are too young to know who Tab Hunter is.

I am planning a Tab Hunter film festival to enhance the enjoyment of the book.

More later.

Soon, everyone will know Tab.