Tab Hunter, a dazzlingly handsome actor who became one of the most popular teen idols of the 1950s, and who struggled to prevent his gay identity from derailing his career, died July 8 at a hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif. He would have turned 87 on July 11.
The cause was cardiac arrest triggered by a blood clot in his leg, said his husband, producer Allan Glaser.
Like many stars of his era, “Hunter” was largely an invention of Hollywood. As a tousle-haired, square-jawed teenager named Arthur Gelien, he was discovered while shoveling manure in a Los Angeles stable, given an unlikely new name and cast as a (mostly) upright, (mostly) shirtless do-gooder in Westerns, military dramas and beach flicks.
He became a teen idol, appearing on the covers of fan magazines while, away from the cameras, maintaining closeted relationships with men such as actor Anthony Perkins, who later starred in Psycho.
“I believed, wholeheartedly — still do — that a person’s happiness depends on being true to themselves,” he wrote in a 2005 memoir. “The dilemma, of course, was that being true to myself — and I’m talking sexually now — was impossible in 1953.”
Hunter landed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. after starring in the World War II film Battle Cry (1955), beating out James Dean and Paul Newman to play a Marine recruit going into battle. For about four years he was the studio’s most lucrative young star, dubbed “the Sigh Guy” for his enchanting effect on women.
He even supplanted Elvis Presley at the top of the pop charts in 1957, after recording the song Young Love at the suggestion of an executive at Dot Records. The track stayed at No. 1 for six weeks and spurred Warner Bros. to create their own music division.
It also led the studio to film Damn Yankees (1958), an adaptation of the baseball musical, with Hunter playing a devilishly good ballplayer alongside Tony-winner Gwen Verdon and the show’s original Broadway cast.
“Tab Hunter may not have the larynx that Stephen Douglass had as the original hero, but he has the clean, naive look of a lad breaking into the big leagues and into the magical company of a first-rate star,” wrote New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther.
Hunter said he had a sometimes strained relationship with Warner Bros. executives, who paired him with co-star Natalie Wood on publicity tours in an effort to present the two performers as an item.
(Insiders, the Times later reported, came up with their own name for the duo: “Natalie Wood and Tab Wouldn’t.”)
Yet he also credited the studio with standing behind him when he received negative publicity, most notably when Confidential magazine reported in 1955 that he had been arrested for disorderly conduct at a “limp-wristed pajama party” attended by several other gay men.
In a 2015 column for the Hollywood Reporter, Hunter wrote that the gossip publication learned about the arrest only because his former agent — Henry Willson, sometimes known as the “gay Svengali” — traded information to keep Confidential from outing his client Rock Hudson as gay. Around the time of the story’s publication, Hunter and Wood were featured in a fawning cover story by the magazine Photoplay. “That probably saved me,” he wrote. “After all, in Hollywood, everybody talks, but nothing matters more than the bottom line.”
After the success of Damn Yankees, Hunter was inspired to buy his way out of the Warner Bros. contract and search for more ambitious acting roles as a freelancer. He was mostly unsuccessful.
Troy Donahue had succeeded him as Hollywood’s leading blond-haired heartthrob, and he alienated some fans and producers after he was charged, but ultimately acquitted, with beating his dog.
Hunter headlined a short-lived television series on NBC, The Tab Hunter Show.