(2015, 90 min)
Country: U. S.
Director: Jeffrey Schwarz
Studio: Filmrise
Language: English
SYNOPSIS: Tab Hunter Confidential has the unique advantage of exclusive, unprecedented access to Tab Hunter himself, who shares first hand, for the first time, what it was like to be a studio manufactured movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood and the consequences of being someone totally different from his studio manufactured image.
The film traces Tab's dizzying rise to Hollywood super-stardom, his secret life in an era when being openly gay was unthinkable, his relationship with Anthony Perkins and his ultimate triumph when the limelight finally passed him by.
REVIEW:
In this slick, savvy, rollicking, and eye-popping film, Hunter, the former matinee heartthrob, aged 83, speaks with more frankness than ever before about the travails of being a closeted actor in Hollywood in the 1950s.
"Tab is much more comfortable in his own skin now talking about his private life," insists producer Allan Glaser, Hunter’s partner and business associate for three decades, explaining how the film—six years in the making—picks up from where the actor’s 2005 memoir left off. "He was more guarded in his book because he never discussed his sexuality [publicly] before. But to hear him talk firsthand about his relationship with [actor] Tony Perkins and others is fascinating." The documentary, by director Jeffrey Schwarz (I Am Divine), also presents contemporary interviews with a parade of Hunter’s peers, including Clint Eastwood, John Waters, Debbie Reynolds, Lainie Kazan, Connie Stevens, Robert Wagner, and George Takei.
Tab Hunter Confidential is not only brave for its candor and enlightening for the social context it provides, it is also a delightful eyeful, using ingeniously edited vintage clips and employing rarely seen still photos in that lush, three-dimensional format pioneered in the film The Kid Stays in the Picture. Though Tab has anything but a light touch, employing some of the same tabloid conventions that it decries or spoofs, it wears its camp loosely, like a dazzling cape. The kid can’t help it.
-- David Friend, Vanity Fair (http://www.vanityfair.com/)
