Want to sing, Tab? Sure! He knocked Elvis off the top of the charts with his version of this one. Pre-Method, his acting was slow to come around, and critic Rex Reed notes how “not a hint of talent” turned up in his earlier movies.īut being “The Sigh Guy,” as he was nicknamed, opportunities kept dropping into his lap. Hunter, who died at 86, started his career at the tail end of the Hollywood long-term studio contract era, signing with Warner Brothers, making a few notable films for them (“Battle Cry,” “Damn Yankees”) before buying out that contract, starring in his own TV show, a quick failure, and watching himself quickly replaced by the next pretty boy (boys) to come along - Troy Donahue, among them. A gay talent agent specializing in “pretty boys” (Rock Hudson, most famously, Chad Everett and Guy Madison) cooked up the name - “We’ve got to TAB you something!” It’s basically an autobiography, as in “My version told my way.”Ī Santa Barbara native born Arthur Gelien to a single mom from Germany, Hunter had the chiseled blond good looks of the quintessential California surfer (he wasn’t, and only made one “surf” film).

And if d irector Jeffrey Schwarz goes easy on his in the questioning and tilts towards flattering in the discussions of Hunter’s talents, well, Tab’s longtime companion, producer Allan Glaser, rounded up the money and produced the picture. “Tab Hunter Confidential” is an upbeat, revealing portrait of a man who spent his career and indeed most of his life in the Hollywood closet, by necessity in the beginning, by his own desire for privacy he insists in the film. The recent passing of 1950s pinup, matinee and pop idol Tab Hunter is reason enough to revisit or take in, for the first time, this 2015 documentary, a film as sweet, discrete and lightly charming at the man himself.

Tab Hunter Confidential by Hunter