Tab Hunter RIP

Tab Hunter with Anthony Perkins.

I didn't hear this until now. Tab Hunter died Sunday at age 86. A secretly gay screen heartthrob. He was discovered while working as a stable boy. I looked through his acting credits in imdb.com. I've seen only four that I'm aware of and I have no memory of him in two of them. I saw The Loved One, Won Ton Ton the Dog That Saved Hollywood, Polyester and Lust in the Dust. I may have seen him in some TV appearances. He was in an episode of Cannon and Hawaii Five-O among others. Was in one spaghetti western, Vengeance is my Forgiveness.

In the early 'fifties, Hunter had the same agent as Rock Hudson and Rory Calhoun. When Confidential magazine was about to publish some scandalous story about Hudson, their agent got them to squash the article in exchange to two stories about Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun---that Calhoun had been sentenced to Federal prison when he was seventeen for driving a car he stole across state lines and that Tab Hunter had been arrested for disorderly conduct when a gay party he attended at age fifteen was raided by the cops. Hunter had lied about his age and joined the Coast Guard at fifteen and one of his Coast Guard buddies had invited him to the party.

Oddly, his career took off after the story was published.

With Roddy McDowall.