LittleHo

If you are under the age of 18 PLEASE LEAVE.

This site is strictly adult entertainment.
alapoet:

reaching out to my conservative brothers and sisters

:)

Very little posted here is mine!

Little House of Ill Repute does not claim rights

to any of the photos or media content posted to the site.

No copyright infringement is intended.

However...

If you're looking for skin, there's lots

of it down below.

Tab Hunter - THE 1950s Hearthrob

Arthur Andrew Gelien was born July 11, 1931 and roughly 20 years later, was given the stage name "Tab Hunter" by his first agent, Henry Willson. His good looks landed him a role in the film Island of Desire opposite Linda Darnell. However, it was his co-starring role as young Marine Danny in 1955's World War II drama Battle Cry, in which he has an affair with an older woman, but ends up marrying the girl next door, that cemented his position as one of Hollywood's top young romantic leads. His other hit films include The Burning Hills with Natalie Wood, That Kind Of Woman with Sophia Loren, Gunman's Walk With Van Heflin and The Pleasure Of His Company with Debbie Reynolds. He went on to star in over forty films.

In the '50s Tab Hunter was known as the "Sigh Guy" — a pretty-boy pinup whose wholesome guy-next-door looks made audiences swoon in films like Battle Cry and Damn Yankees. By night he hit the town with glamorous starlets like Natalie Wood, Debbie Reynolds and Jayne Mansfield on his arm. Yet those extracurricular appearances were just as much a performance for Hunter—who was secretly gay—as his work in front of the camera. "I knew what I was," says Hunter. "I just never talked about it."

Until now. In his newly released memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, the actor, who says he spent much of his career "pretty fearful" of having his secret exposed, is finally opening up about being gay in 1950s Hollywood. During that time, he writes, there was an unwritten rule: "Act discreetly, and people would respect your right to privacy." So Hunter, now 80, dutifully stepped out on his studio-arranged dates while secretly romancing the likes of Psycho actor Anthony Perkins, skater Ronnie Robertson and actor Scott Marlowe. "When you're under contract to a studio," he explains, "your job is to do as they say. If you have a job, do your job."

All the while, fan magazines like Movie Life (which were in cahoots with the studios) breathlessly trumpeted Hunter's fictional heterosexual pursuits. "People ate that up like a hot fudge sundae at the corner drugstore," he says. Hunter says he came close to marrying a few women that he felt a connection with, including actresses Lori Nelson and Etchika Choureau. Ultimately, though, "my own fears stopped me," he says. "It was not being true to myself."

Indeed, he considered marrying in part to defuse a 1955 story in the tabloid Confidential, which questioned Hunter's sexuality by luridly playing up a disorderly conduct charge stemming from his 1950 arrest at a gay party. However, the rumors did little to dissuade his fans—or his bosses. Soon after, Hunter says, Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner "threw his arm around me and said, 'Today's headlines are tomorrow's toilet paper.' "

The normally reserved Hunter's revelations in Confidential (yes, he named it after that tabloid) were surprising even to his longtime boyfriend Allan Glaser, 45. "He never talked about Tony Perkins. I knew about it because I read it in other books, but he's not gossipy," says Glaser, a producer who met Hunter at a 1983 pitch meeting. "This was like one long three-year psychoanalysis session he had to go through."

He certainly had plenty to get off his chest. Growing up fatherless in several California cities, Hunter writes that his first homosexual experience, at 14, led to "overwhelming" guilt, prompting him to lie about his age and join the Coast Guard at 15. Soon after being discharged a year later, he was introduced to agent Henry Willson, who changed Hunter's name from Art Gelien (selecting Hunter because of the hunter horses Tab liked to ride). Hunter quickly ascended in Hollywood and even topped the pop charts with 1957's "Young Love." "It was really exciting," he says, "but I was very insecure. I was struggling to think, 'Am I worthy of being in this?' "

Like many a teen idol, Hunter saw his star slowly fade, and by the mid-'70s—"when I couldn't get arrested in Hollywood"—made ends meet doing dinner theater before mounting a comeback in 1981's kitsch classic Polyester. He was also sidelined by a 1980 heart attack, a 1990 stroke and quadruple bypass surgery in 2000, but thanks to a steady regimen of aerobics and horseback riding, "he can outshine any 50-year-old I know," says Glaser. Unlike many former stars who refuse to admit that fame has passed them by ("One of the chapters in the book is called 'Happy to be Forgotten,' and I am," he says), Hunter has happily embraced his quiet life at their Montecito, California, home. "You can be as private as you want," he says. "It's pretty wonderful."

Text via People.com

In September 1955, the tabloid magazine Confidential reported Hunter's 1950 arrest for disorderly conduct. The innuendo-laced article, and a second one focusing on Rory Calhoun's prison record, were the result of a deal Henry Willson had brokered with the scandal rag in exchange for not revealing his more prominent client Rock Hudson's sexual orientation to the public. Not only was there no negative impact on Hunter's career, but a few months later he was named Most Promising New Personality in a nationwide poll sponsored by the Council of Motion Picture Organizations.

tab-Hunter-When-I-Fall-in-Love-Vinyl-LP-Record

Hunter had a 1957 hit record with a cover of the song "Young Love", which was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six weeks. He also had the hit "Ninety-Nine Ways", which peaked at #11 in the chart. His success prompted Jack Warner to enforce the actor's contract with the Warner Bros. studio by banning Dot Records, the label for which Hunter had recorded the single (and which was owned by rival Paramount Pictures), from releasing a follow-up album he had recorded for them. He established Warner Bros. Records specifically for Hunter, although his singing career foundered after a few more recordings.

Hunter in Damn Yankees (1958)

Hunter was in the 1958 musical film Damn Yankees, in which he played Joe Hardy of Washington D.C's American League baseball club. The film had originally been a Broadway show, but Hunter was the only one in the film version who had not appeared in the original cast. The show was based on the 1954 best-selling book The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglass Wallop. Hunter later said the filming was hellish because director George Abbott was only interested in re-creating the stage version word for word. Hunter was Warner Bros. top money grossing star from 1955 through 1959. In 1958, he sang on ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, a venue open to scores of performers in the entertainment world. On October 27, 1960, Hunter performed on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Hunter's failure to win the role of Tony in the film adaptation of West Side Story prompted him to agree to star in a weekly television sitcom. On July 9, 1960, prior to the program's debut, he was arrested by Glendale, California police for allegedly beating his dog Fritz. His 11-day trial started in mid-October, a month after The Tab Hunter Show debuted on Sunday evenings on NBC. It was proved that the neighbor who initiated the charges had done so for spite when Hunter declined her repeated invitations to dinner, and he was acquitted by the jury. The Tab Hunter Show had low ratings and was hence cancelled after one season.

For a short time in the latter 1960s, Hunter settled in the south of France, where he acted in spaghetti westerns. His career was revived in the 1980s, when he starred opposite actor Divine in John Waters' Polyester (1981) and Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust (1985). He is particularly remembered by later audiences as Mr. Stewart, the substitute teacher in Grease 2, who sang "Reproduction." Hunter had a major role in the 1988 horror film Cameron's Closet. He also wrote and starred in Dark Horse (1992).

Currently, a documentary about Tab's life called "Tab Hunter Confidential" is being developed by producers Allan Glaser, Neil Koenigsberg, and Jeffrey Schwarz of Automat Pictures.

In January 2012, Tab Hunter and Joyce DeWitt will appear in A.R. Gurney's play "Love Letters" at Judson Theatre Company in Pinehurst, North Carolina.

Personal life

In Hunter's 2005 best selling autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, he acknowledged his homosexuality, confirming rumors that had circulated since the height of his fame. According to William L. Hamilton of The New York Times, detailed reports about his alleged romances with very close friends Debbie Reynolds and Natalie Wood were strictly the fodder of studio publicity departments. As Wood and Hunter embarked on a well-publicized and groundless romance, promoting his apparent heterosexuality while promoting their films, insiders developed their own headline for the item: 'Natalie Wood and Tab Wouldn't'.

Tab Hunter with Debbie Reynolds.

Tab Hunter with Linda Darnell.

Tab Hunter with Mona Freeman.

Tab Hunter with Natalie Wood.

Tab Hunter with Natalie Wood

Hunter did become close enough with Etchika Choureau, his co-star in Lafayette Escadrille, and Joan Cohn, widow of Harry Cohn, to contemplate marriage, but thought he never could maintain a marriage and remained merely platonic friends with both women.

Tab Hunter with James Dean.

During Hollywood's studio era, Hunter says, life "was difficult for me, because I was living two lives at that time. A private life of my own, which I never discussed, never talked about to anyone. And then my Hollywood life, which was just trying to learn my craft and succeed..." The star emphasizes that the word 'gay' "wasn't even around in those days, and if anyone ever confronted me with it, I'd just kinda freak out. I was in total denial. I was just not comfortable in that Hollywood scene, other than the work process." "There was a lot written about my sexuality, and the press was pretty darn cruel," the actor says, but what "moviegoers wanted to hold in their hearts were the boy-next-door marines, cowboys and swoon-bait sweethearts I portrayed."

Hunter had long-term relationships with bisexual actor Anthony Perkins and champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson, before settling down with Allan Glaser, his partner of 30 years.