Includes index

The Cushing Library/Women & Gender Studies copy was acquired as part of The Don Kelly Research Collection of Gay Literature and Culture.,TXA

He became a #1 box office attraction, recorded a #1 hit song, and survived a major sex scandal--all by the time he was 25. Five years later, new stars had been developed, and Tab Hunter found himself scrambling to find work, struggling just to survive. Yet survive he did, re-creating himself as a cult star and film producer in a career that spans five decades and more than fifty films. This book tells what it felt like to be created, packaged, and sold to the American public; to appear on-screen, off-screen, and on every newsstand in America with the biggest leading ladies of the day, while dealing with the reality of being gay in a time when the word didn't exist. It's his story of how he kept his bearings when he was suddenly no longer under the protective wing of the Warner Bros. publicity department, no longer in demand as a "star."--Publisher description.

"Welcome to Hollywood, circa 1950, the end of the Golden Age. A remarkably handsome young boy, still a teenager, gets 'discovered' by a big-time movie agent. Because when he takes his shirt off young hearts beat faster, because he is the picture of innocence and trust and need, he will become a star. It seems almost preordained. The open smile says, 'You will love me,' and soon the whole world does. The young boy's name was Tab Hunter--a made-up name, of course, a Hollywood name--and it was his time. Stardom didn't come overnight, although it seemed that way. In fact, the fame came first, when his face adorned hundreds of magazine covers; the movies, the studio contract, the name in lights--all that came later. For Tab Hunter was a true product of Hollywood, a movie star created from a stable boy, a shy kid made even more so by the way his schoolmates--both girls and boys--reacted to his beauty, by a mother who provided for him in every way except emotionally, and by a secret that both tormented him and propelled him forward. In [this book], Hunter speaks out for the first time about what it was like to be a movie star at the end of the big studio era, to be treated like a commodity, to be told what to do, how to behave, whom to be seen with, what to wear. He speaks also about what it was like to be gay, at first confused by his own fears and misgivings, then as an actor trapped by an image of boy-next-door innocence. And when he dared to be difficult, to complain to the studio about the string of mostly mediocre movies that were assigned to him, he learned that just like any manufactured product, he was disposable--disposable and replaceable. Hunter's career as a bona fide movie star lasted a decade. But he persevered as an actor, working continuously at a profession he had come to love, seeking and earning the respect of his peers, and of the Hollywood community. And so Tab Hunter Confidential is at heart a story of survival--of the giddy highs of stardom, and the soul-destroying lows when phone calls begin to go unreturned; of the need to be loved, and the fear of being consumed; of the hope of an innocent boy, and the rueful summation of a man who did it all, and who lived to tell it all."--Dust jacket.

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