

When you’re in a contract with a studio, your job is to promote motion pictures promote whatever the hell they want you to promote, because that is your job. How much were they involved in arranging or planning that stuff? The film makes clear that studios played a heavy role in controlling your images. The film notes that you’d go to premiere parties with Natalie Wood, get photographed dancing together, and then escape out the back door, where you’d meet Tony, and she’d meet Dennis Hopper.

And I tried to get Tony involved, but he wasn’t a great horse lover. My main love - just to breathe reality in that unrealistic world - was going out to the barn to be with my horses. Now, everybody wears that, but in those days… Not in disguise, but in a baseball cap and sunglasses. But when we’d go out together, we’d kind of almost go out in disguise. People think that because you might have a feeling toward another male that you don’t enjoy women. We’d go out double-dating a lot, because I love being around beautiful women. He was under contract to Paramount, I was under contract to Warner Bros. Looking back, what kind of lengths did you guys have to go to at the time to cover up your relationship? Related: 2015 SXSW Preview: 13 Buzzy Films to Look Out For Unfortunately, in our society today, so often people don’t want to hear the positive, they only want to hear the negative. But it’s something that he wanted to do.Īnd people should not sit in judgment in any way, shape or form of another human being. And I respect him tremendously for having done that, because I’m sure it was a very difficult decision for him. He was just a very intelligent man … Everybody hopefully makes the right choices in life, and he made the choice to marry this wonderful woman and they had two lovely children. Tony was a very fine young actor, and I respected him tremendously. Could you speak for a moment about what he meant to you? One of the sequences in the film that I found especially fascinating centers on your relationship with Tony Perkins. My mother was an old-school German, and she used to say, “Remember, there’s nothing for show.” So what happens? I end up in show business. You mention in the film how difficult it’s always been to talk about your personal life, especially your sexuality. Here’s what Hunter told us about his life, his career, and his new documentary: It also illuminates the challenges a closeted gay heartthrob faced in what he calls a “bygone era,” and details the secret relationships he had with the likes of champion figure skater Ronnie Robertson and Psycho star Anthony Perkins. Confidential portrays the rise and fall of his career, from his early work under contract at Warner Bros., to later films like Grease 2 and Polyester.

Hunter hasn’t appeared in a film since 1992’s Dark Horse, and now spends his days far from the spotlight, living alongside his partner of over four decades, Allan Glaser - who produced the documentary - as well as his horse Marlow. I’m a firm believer in that, being a horse lover.” But I really feel that it’s all about … somewhere under a pile of crap, there’s gotta be a pony. I’ve had a lot of highs, and a great deal of lows. “My sexuality is only a thread of the tapestry of my life,” the 83-year-old Hunter was quick to point out in a recent interview with Yahoo Movies, in advance of the premiere of Tab Hunter Confidential (based on the 2006 autobiography of the same name, it will make its debut Sunday at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tx.) “I’ve been a very, very fortunate man. But Hunter was also what he calls “ a product” of the Hollywood studio moguls - a leading man whose public life was a carefully orchestrated sham, intended to cover up the fact that the swoon-inducing star was gay. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed star of such hit films as Damn Yankees! and Battle Cry was a film and music sensation in the 1950s, eliciting screams from young girls all over the world, and romancing such big-name stars as Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds. Before the Beatles and the Biebs, there was Tab Hunter.
