Good Movies with Tab Hunter

Damn Yankees is fun.

Damn Yankees is probably his best film.

I'm going to try Gunman's Walk. He was also in some early fleshcapades that are hard to find.

Polyester may not be considered a "good movie" by some, but it's fun.

His other film with Divine - List In The Dust - is lousy.

I like Polyester but it's hardly prime Tab Hunter flesh.

Polyester is one movie I can watch time and again. It's even better knowing that in interviews, Tab Hunter said he really enjoyed making it, and he especially enjoyed working with Divine.

Nothing he ever did rivals Polyester.

[quote] but did he make any really good movies?

He made several good movies but they weren't good because of him. Damn Yankees as already mentioned and Battle Cry for examples.

I've always wondered if The Pleasure of his Company is any good. Great cast.

He was gay, gay, gay! And they turned him into a teen heartthrob. People adored him and they ate up anything he served to them. He even had a music career on top of the film projects. He carried that big head to his grave.

It's been several years since I saw [italic]Gunman's Walk[/italic] but I remember liking the movie and thinking Tab was quite good in it.

I don't know her.

He's perfectly fine in Damn Yankees, holding his own quite well.

Doesn't he write in his autobio that they were all horrible to him on that movie? They were all a bunch of arrogant Broadway snobs stuck with a Hollywood prettyboy. Despite the fact that they needed him to sell tickets.

He wasn’t a great actor. Cute, but no Olivier he.

Tab Hunter's time at the top was brief. He was Warners Bros' most popular star from 1955 to 1959, and WB was intent on making him and Natalie Wood the William Powell and Myrna Loy of the teen set. They were to star in five pictures together, but after the second one flopped ("The Girl He Left Behind"), Hunter backed out of the third, "Bombers B-52," which ended future pairings of the two.

Hunter also had a successful recording career on the Dot label, but this angered Jack Warner, who wanted a big cut of the pie. Warner banned Dot from putting out Hunter's second album, and created the Warner Bros music label specifically for Hunter. But Hunter barely saw a dime from these recordings and Hunter soured on the whole WB deal altogether and rebelled. Warner retaliated by bringing in Troy Donahue from Universal and giving him the young male lead parts. In 1959, Tab bought out his WB contract and went freelance, but never again had the level of success he had at Warner Bros.

Hacksaw is a good one. It’s on Disney+.

Lafayette Escadrille has its moments, but gets bogged down my a dull love story.

I've never heard of that. But wonderful title! I'll try to find it.

If he'd stayed at Warner Bros, he probably would have been stuck in "A Summer Place" and Parrish"----campy soap operas. He was a better actor than Troy Donahue, but that isn't saying much. He might have wound up with a more successful tv series (Warner cycled their contract players through tv and movies more than some other studios), instead he had a one season show with a weak time slot.

I saw him when he was promoting his biopic. I don't think he had a big head at all. He seemed fairly realistic about his talent and career. The biopic was based on his autobio which was written to get out ahead of someone else's bio of him that was never published. There are some sections of the book & film that seem a bit elipitical--esp. around his relations with his brother and the period after he was no longer a tv or movie property.

R12

We are just good friends.

I loved Lafayette Espadrilles.

r18 Etchika Choureau features heavily in his autobio.

He was well-cast in Damn Yankees, and held his own well. He was pretty much the only one who didn't do the show on Broadway, so there was some natural resentment on the part of the cast that he "took" Stephen Douglass' role. Of course, Hollywood was never gonna use him. Gwen Verdon almost missed out on the chance to recreate her own start turn. Tab may not have been the world's greatest actor, but he was right for the role, and it played to his strengths -especially his all-American looks and general likability.

Of course, anyone with an eye had to know that he was gay! The first time I saw the movie, I totally believed that young Joe loves his wife, and wasn't interested in Lola "that way" which meant either Tab Hunter was a very fine actor, or Tab Hunter was gay.

This will be a brief thread.

Who do you think would have gotten the Lola part(which Gwen probably got because of Troy Donohue starring in the movie as box office insurance.)? Gwen was not pretty enough for a role like that on camera. Cyd Charisse would have been a possibility but she was still firmly at Metro doing things like Meet Me in Las Vegas and Silk Stockings. John Raitt was a mistake in Pajama Game. Doris wipes him off the screen. It needed a Keel or MacRae both of whom had the chops for the role. Haney wasn't pretty enough for her role and Shirley or Mitzi would have been perfect. Both films I believe were not the hits that were expected though they did respectably.

"Lafayette Escadrille" was supposed to star Warner Bros contract player, Paul Newman, with fellow WB contract player, Clint Eastwood playing his best friend. But Newman went off to do "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" for MGM instead, and his part went to Tab Hunter. Tab and Clint weren't clicking, however, so Tab's friend, David Janssen, was brought in and Eastwood was bumped down to a smaller supporting part.

Met him at a party with Joyce De Witt in NYC in the 00s and they were both super nice. It was a gay writers party and he’d just released his autobiography. I still have the refrigerator magnet. Rewatched Lust in the Dust recently and it was better than I remembered.

Tab Hunter in his own words in 2004.

........

Not a movie, but Tab and Tallulah starred in the 2nd Broadway run of 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore' in 1964, with Tony Richardson directing. It was a complete flop, lasting only x5 performances. The hooting and hollering gays were in full force for those five performances, though...how I'd kill to travel back in time and see it, just for kicks.

BTW, I had Tab sign a Tab can in 2016 while he was promoting his bio in Palm Springs. He couldn't have been nicer...a stand-up guy.

Tallulah was a complete pain in the ass during rehearsals and previews for "Milk Train..." She completely ignored Richardson's direction, constantly interrupted the other actors line readings with idle chatter, was consistently late to the set, and was locked in an upstaging duel with veteran actress Ruth Ford. Tab let it be known he wasn't a fan of Tallu, especially after she told the press when questioned about Tab's sexuality, "Well, I don't know, dahling, he never sucked my cock!" When the show opened on Broadway, Tallu camped it up for her gays in the audience. With them hooting and hollering at their idol's double-entendres and knowing deliveries, Tab finally realized why Tallu wasn't invested in putting on a great play. They were merely props for her one-woman show.

LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE was William "Wild Bill" Wellman's last movie. It has a beautiful score by Leonard Rosenman, and Tab is so pretty it almost hurts to look at him.

Tab in "Battle Cry" - pic one:

Tab in "Battle Cry" - pic two:

Tab Hunter and Ethel Merman.

The 'comedy' skit isn't very funny. Skip to 4:30 when they sing "You're Just in Love". As was the style in the '50s, I'm pretty sure they're lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track

[quote]Met him at a party with Joyce De Witt in NYC in the 00s and they were both super nice. It was a gay writers party and he’d just released his autobiography.

Joyce DeWitt is a gay writer? Who knew?

[quote]Who do you think would have gotten the Lola part(which Gwen probably got because of Troy Donohue starring in the movie as box office insurance.)?

What does Troy Donahue have to do with "Damn Yankees?"

R9

[quote] I've always wondered if The Pleasure of his Company is any good. Great cast.

Tab doesn't have much to do here because the great chemistry is between Fred Astaire and Lilli Palmer who plays his ex-wife and mother to their daughter Debbbie Reynolds.

Plot: Famous globetrotter father "Pogo" Poole (Astaire) returns to the USA (San Francisco) because his daughter (whom he hasn't seen for years, since she was little) is getting married. Ex-wife Lilli is now long married to wealthy Gary Merrill (stepfather to Debbie Reynolds) and they live in a great San Francisco mansion together with Lilli's father played by Charles Ruggles, who watches the ensuing action and comments from the side. The San Francisco family has left messages for Pogo all over the world telling him about the upcoming nuptias but discouragingly have received no reply.

When Pogo returns unexpectedly and moves into their home he proceeds to take over (a bit of "The Man Who Came to Dinner"). He charms and is charmed by his now grown daughter and is less than enthused over her fiance, a local rancher, played by Tab Hunter. Watched skeptically by his knowing ex-wife, Pogo would like nothing better than to go off globetrotting with his beautiful daughter in spite of the planned approaching nuptials.

Not much for Tab to do, but he's OK in this. The real charm, though, is Astaire and Palmer, with worried frustration played by Merrill and Ruggles doing the comments from the sidelines. Debbie Reynolds is OK as the bride and she has some nice moments with Astaire when her wish to have him there for the wedding comes true.

Nice, likeable film.

Beautiful clothes, sets and San Francisco. Made in 1961.

He was good in The Birds and Seconds.

Has anyone seen his PSYCHO ripoff from the early 1970s? It was released under a few different titles.

It's Tab Day on TCM today. They're even showing the "Tab Hunter Confidential" documentary this evening.

No respect for the CLASSICS

Tab Hunter made good movies?

That kind of woman

gunman's walk

track of the cat

sweet kill/the arousers

damn yankees

the burning hills

the pleasure of his company

battle cry

polyester

the life and time of judge roy bean

they came to cordura