Tab Hunter Confidential

Whether or not you are of an age to have remembered 1950s move-star, Tab Hunter (aka Arthur Kelm), you have to admit, after watching this lovely if limited summation of his life and work, that Tab Hunter is still, at 85, a gorgeous man. So there, ageist queens!

Hunter, at one point the highest-paid star at Warner Bros., was outed as a probable gay man by the infamous Confidential Magazine, an unscrupulous gossip rag, homophobic, racist, sexist, etc, during the '50s in the USA. As it turns out, the "suggestion" that this handsome blond-with-blue-eyes was...that way...didn't quite do the trick of killing his career, but it did hurt the actor on a personal level.

Never a deep performer - � la New York's Actor's Studio - the hunky star proved himself as a leading man in a series of glamorous Warner's fare such as "Battle Cry" (1955) and, especially, "Damn Yankees" (1958). But his later films, especially after he bought out his long-term contract to WB ($100,000), failed his career.

All actors have ups-and-downs in reel-life as well as in real life. But the rumors and suggestions of his homosexuality overtook his All-American image, so he retreated to his horse-farm in Santa Barbara, doing Dinner Theatre during the 1970s, until John Waters sort-of resurrected his acting career in a couple of tacky-but-funny films opposite the late drag star, Divine. "Polyester" and "Lust in the Dust" certainly brought him back to cinema life, although the documentary, produced by his long-time lover, Allen Glaser (along with veteran producers Jeffrey Schwartz and Neil Konigsberg), ignores the trouble he got into with the actors union, SAG, for appearing in non-union fare.

While the documentary is clearly on the side of the still-handsome survivor of ShowBiz or Bust! actions, and whatever in his past might be construed as negative is ignored, I can attest, having met him myself once at a Texas Dinner Theatre, in the week between their last performances and our own rehearsals, I found him to be an unfailingly polite and kind man. His early history of having an older brother who protected him from the shock of a parents' divorce, only to be killed in action during the Vietnam War, caring for a difficult German mother, fending off advantageous (read: beard) marriages, maintaining friendships, and so forth, makes this a upstanding documentary. His book by the same name was a good read as this doc is a good watch.

"Tab Hunter Confidential"
Blu-ray/2016
www.automatpictures.com
$14.95