Tab Hunter was a Hollywood heartthrob of the 1950s and 1960s appearing on the covers of hundreds of film magazines.
34 Facts About Tab Hunter
2.
Tab Hunter had a music career in the late 1950s; in 1957, he released a number one hit single "Young Love".
3.
Hunter's 2005 autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, was a New York Times bestseller.
4.
Tab Hunter was raised in California, living with his mother, his brother, and his maternal grandparents, John Henry and Ida Gelien; the family resided in San Francisco, Long Beach and Los Angeles.
5.
Tab Hunter's mother re-assumed her maiden surname, Gelien, and changed her sons' surnames as well.
6.
Tab Hunter's first film role was a minor part in a film noir, The Lawless.
7.
Tab Hunter was a friend of character actor Paul Guilfoyle, who suggested him to director Stuart Heisler; Heisler was looking for an unknown to play the lead in Island of Desire opposite Linda Darnell.
8.
The film, essentially a two-hander between Tab Hunter and Darnell, was a hit.
9.
Tab Hunter supported George Montgomery in Gun Belt, a Western produced by Edward Small.
10.
Tab Hunter began acting on stage, appearing in a production of Our Town.
11.
Tab Hunter was then offered, and accepted, a contract at Warner Bros.
12.
Tab Hunter's character has an affair with an older woman, but ends up marrying the girl next door.
13.
Tab Hunter received strong critical acclaim for a television performance he gave in the debut episode of Playhouse 90 written by Rod Serling and directed by John Frankenheimer.
14.
The film had originally been a Broadway musical, and Tab Hunter was the only one in the film version who had not appeared in the original cast.
15.
Tab Hunter later said the filming was hellish because director George Abbott was interested only in recreating the stage version word for word.
16.
Tab Hunter appeared in the western They Came to Cordura and starred in the romantic drama That Kind of Woman.
17.
Tab Hunter's success prompted Jack L Warner to enforce the actor's contract with the Warner Bros.
18.
Tab Hunter had a starring role as Debbie Reynolds' love interest in the romantic comedy The Pleasure of His Company.
19.
Tab Hunter played the lead in an Italian swashbuckler shot in Egypt, The Golden Arrow.
20.
Tab Hunter was in a war movie for American International Pictures, Operation Bikini.
21.
Tab Hunter had a starring role in Ride the Wild Surf, a surf film for Columbia, followed by a movie in Britain, the crime drama Troubled Waters.
22.
Tab Hunter stayed in England to make another picture for AIP, the science fiction film War Gods of the Deep starring Vincent Price.
23.
Tab Hunter starred in a film directed by Richard Rush, the low budget comedy The Fickle Finger of Fate.
24.
Tab Hunter had the lead role in the psychological horror film Sweet Kill, the first movie from director Curtis Hanson.
25.
Tab Hunter won a co-starring role in the successful western film The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, starring Paul Newman.
26.
Tab Hunter had small roles in Timber Tramps, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood and Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold.
27.
Tab Hunter's career was revived in the 1980s, when he starred opposite actor Divine in John Waters' Polyester and Paul Bartel's Lust in the Dust.
28.
Tab Hunter had a major role in the horror film Cameron's Closet.
29.
Tab Hunter has a star for his contributions to the music industry on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6320 Hollywood Blvd.
30.
Tab Hunter came out publicly as a gay man in his 2005 memoir.
31.
Tab Hunter had a long-term relationship with actor Anthony Perkins after having met him at the Chateau Marmont during the filming of Friendly Persuasion in 1956.
32.
Tab Hunter wanted to be a movie star more than anything.
33.
Except for a period in his youth, Tab Hunter was a practicing Catholic for the rest of his life.
34.
On July 8,2018, three days shy of his 87th birthday, Tab Hunter died after suffering cardiac arrest that arose from complications related to deep vein thrombosis.