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"Tab Hunter: Confidential" (Movie) and Tony Perkins and Psycho

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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One of the streaming channels has "Tab Hunter: Confidential" on. Its a 2015 interview with an actor who made a great big splash in the 50's, and ended up struggling from about 1960 on. But that was in his career.

It was evidently decades later that Tab Hunter came out as gay, and further revealed that he and Tony Perkins had a relationship for about three years in the late 50's.

Watching the film as a heterosexual male(who still thinks that Tony Perkins is beautiful in Psycho, hah) had its issues for me. How can I REALLY report on what its about, and what it is trying to say. The subject of the movie -- Tab Hunter himself -- makes the impression that, as an almost too pretty (if blond and macho) star in his 20's in the 50's, he matured as fit and handsome men do into an extremely handsome middle and late age. As you watch him get interviewed in older age you think: this is a MOVIE STAR. The face. The charisma. The whispery, smoky voice(not too removed from his once co-star Clint Eastwood, who makes a brief talking head appearance in the film.)

When Tab's tale reaches Tony Perkins, it gets interesting. Perhaps to avoid a "detour," Psycho is not mentioned at all. Indeed, it seems that Perkins cut off the relationship with Hunter just a year or so ahead of Psycho, in search of bigger stardom and lower risk.

But Psycho IS a part of the tale, this way:

We see that Tab Hunter did his share of TV work. One of the teleplays was "Fear Strikes Out," in which Hunter played baseball player Jimmy Piersoll, who was over-bullied by a dominating sports dad into a mental breakdown.

Per Hunter, while he was in the relationship with Perkins, he told Perkins how much he hoped to get the role of Jimmy Piersall in the movie of Fear Strikes Out.

Perkins eventually told Hunter, "Hey..Paramount just bought Fear Strikes Out for me to star in."

Ouch. A little mean. A little "All About Eve-ish." This helped kill off the Hunter/Perkins relationship. True? I don't know. Hunter was alive to give the interview, Perkins was long dead.

But wait, there's more: Alfred Hitchcock decided he wanted to work with Anthony Perkins -- in general and then for Psycho..because Hitch saw Fear Strikes Out !"

So Tab Hunter indirectly got Tony Perkins not only the role in Fear Strikes Out...but the role in Psycho.

Tab Hunter got one big hit about the Marines -- "Battle Cry" -- and then one Hollywood version of a Broadway hit musical -- "Damn Yankees" -- and then things went south fast. Hunter claims he bought out his contract from Jack Warner and promptly saw Troy Donohue put in to take his place. (Tab says that "Troy Donohue" was almost HIS stage name; from the same agent, who discarded it for Tab Hunter.)

One realizes that despite Battle Cry and Damn Yankees, Tab Hunter didn't really have the potential of Anthony Perkins when they were colleagues . Perkins was above the title with Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn, and had an Oscar nom(Friendly Persuasion) and was good enough to star in a Hitchcock film at the latter's peak.

Tab Hunter kind of drifted off...getting perhaps the career that Tony Perkins would have gotten if he had NOT done Psycho...handsome ingénue in declining movies of declining budgets.

Tab Hunter was also a bit of a Hollywood rarity -- a blond whose crewcut in Damn Yankees made him look too Aryan, too "pure" and not nearly as sensitive as the dark-haired Perkins.

That said, there are all sorts of clips of Hunter on TV shows where, compared to the funny-man hosts(Garry Moore, Steve Allen) Hunter looked like a Movie God -- particularly with his great voice.

Anthony Perkins had plays to keep him afloat between movies...and his movie career started to rise again once Psycho hit TV in the 70's. Tab Hunter did "dinner theater" -- a less prestigious way to walk the boards, but it put food on the table.

"Tab Hunter Confidential" skips the one movie that Tab and Tony appeared in together -- though never in the same scene -- Huston's Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

For his part, Hunter says he took a "no hard feelings" journey up to meet with Tony Perkins at his Hollywood home(wife and kids present) in the 80's -- as Psycho II had re-launched Perkins -- to pitch a role for Tony in Tab's newest movie -- "Lust in the Dust". Tony politely declined and Tab says, "that's the last time I ever saw Tony Perkins." Perkins died in 1992.

The 80's reunion between Tab and Tony pops up with "sudden" clips from Psycho AND Psycho II and THAT's where Perkins' inconic role finally gets mentioned in "Tab Hunter: Confidential."

There's also a detour to Hunter's role in "Polyester" with Divine for wacky director John Water. Divine would re-join Hunter in "Lust in the Dust."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And it leaves one wondering: Hunter lived his last years in Montecito, which I know as a very RICH part of SoCal, near Santa Barbara. How did an actor who spent decades struggling for work manage to pull THAT off? No family money is mentioned. I'm guessing maybe the source was Hunter's longtime partner of many years, 30 years his junior and extensively interviewed here. Maybe that man had the money. Or made the money in movies (business side.)

Hunter at one point does note that while he maintained a multi-decade marriage to a gay partner, he would not be judgmental about Tony Perkins electing to marry a woman and have kids. "We all take our different paths." Perkins, not Hunter, died of AIDS.

While the "hook" for Tab Hunter Confidential is his coming out, I think the movie is equally interesting in its study of someone who got quick and easy and lucrative Hollywood success...and then lost it. And had to make a living for 50 more years. And did it. Looking good was perhaps half the battle.

PS. I've noted that Damn Yankees is my favorite movie of 1958 and Psycho is my favorite movie of 1960 but I never dreamed that they had such "connection." As Paramount bought Fear Strikes Out for Perkins, Jack Warner bought Damn Yankees for Hunter -- and placed him with the Broadway cast(which always made that rather strange to me. Other than Hunter, Ray Walston, and Jean Stapleton, everybody's stage people rarely seen again, except Gwen Verdon. Two of them are interviewed as old people today -- and WOW -- sudden nostalgia. The actresses who played the old guy's wife and the female sports reporter. Two movies with baseball star heroes. Tab Hunter played Fear Strikes Out on TV; Tony Perkins did Damn Yankees in Boston theater.