Tab Hunter

ACTOR, PRODUCER, SOUNDTRACK

Tab Hunter Movies or Tv Shows (upto Mar 2024) - Watch Online

29th May 2022 | FlixCatalog Staff

Dreamy Tab Hunter stood out in film history as one of the hottest teen idols of the 1950s era. With blond, tanned, surfer-boy good looks, he was artificially groomed and nicknamed "The Sigh Guy" by the Hollywood studio system, yet managed to continue his career long after his "golden boy" prime.Hunter was born Arthur Kelm on July 11, 1931 in New York City, to Gertrude (Gelien) and Charles Kelm. His father was Jewish and his mother was a German Catholic immigrant. Following his parents' divorce, Hunter grew up in California with his mother, older brother Walter, and maternal grandparents, Ida (Sonnenfleth) and John Henry Gelien. His mother changed her sons' surnames to her maiden name, Gelien. Leaving school and joining the Coast Guard at age fifteen (he lied about his age), he was eventually discharged when the age deception was revealed. Returning home, his life-long passion for horseback riding led to a job with a riding academy.Hunter's fetching handsomeness and trim, athletic physique eventually steered the Californian toward the idea of acting. An introduction to famed agent Henry Willson had Tab signing on the dotted line and what emerged, along with a major career, was the stage moniker of "Tab Hunter." Willson was also responsible with pointing hopeful Roy Fitzgerald towards stardom under the pseudonym Rock Hudson. With no previous experience Tab made his first, albeit minor, film debut in the racially trenchant drama Haines (1950) starring Gail Russell and Macdonald Carey. His only line in the movie was eventually cut upon release. It didn't seem to make a difference for he co-starred in his very next film, the British-made Saturday Island (1952) opposite a somewhat older (by ten years) Linda Darnell, which was set during WWII on a deserted, tropical South Seas isle. His shirt remained off for a good portion of the film, which certainly did not go unnoticed by his ever-growing legion of female (and male) fans.Signed by Warner Bros., stardom was clinched a few years later with another WWII epic Le cri de la victoire (1955), based on the Leon Uris novel, in which he again played a boyish soldier sharing torrid scenes with an older woman (this time Dorothy Malone, playing a love-starved Navy wife). Thoroughly primed as one of Hollywood's top beefcake commodities, the tabloid magazines had a field day initiating an aggressive campaign to "out" Hunter as gay, which would have ruined him. To combat the destructive tactics, Tab was seen escorting a number of Hollywood's lovelies at premieres and parties. In the meantime, he was seldom out of his military fatigues on film, keeping his fans satisfied in such popular dramas as Le renard des océans (1955), Collines brûlantes (1956) and The Girl He Left Behind (1956)--the last two opposite the equally popular Natalie Wood. At around this time, Hunter managed to parlay his boy-next-door film celebrity into a singing career. He topped the charts for over a month with the single "Young Love" in 1957 and produced other "top 40" singles as well.Like other fortunate celebrity-based singers such as Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen, his musical reign was brief. Out of it, however, came the most notable success of his film career top-billing as baseball fan Joe Hardy in the classic Faustian musical Damn Yankees (1958) opposite Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston, who recreated their devil-making Broadway roles. Musically, Tab may have been overshadowed but he brought with him major star power and the film became a crowd pleaser. He continued on with the William A. Wellman-directed C'est la guerre (1958) as, yet again, a wholesome soldier, this time in World War I. More spicy love scenes came with Une espèce de garce (1959), an adult comedy-drama which focused on soldier Hunter and va-va-voom mistress Sophia Loren demonstrating some sexual chemistry on a train.Seldom a favorite with the film critics, the 1960s brought about a career change for Tab. He begged out of his restrictive contract with Warners and ultimately paid the price. With no studio to protect him, he was at the mercy of several trumped-up lawsuits. Worse yet, handsome Troy Donahue had replaced him as the new beefcake on the block. With no film offers coming his way, he starred in his own series The Tab Hunter Show (1960), a rather featherweight sitcom that centered around his swinging bachelor pad. The series last only one season. On the positive side he clocked in with over 200 TV programs over the long stretch and was nominated for an Emmy award for his outstanding performance opposite Geraldine Page in a Playhouse 90 episode. Following the sparkling film comedy Mon séducteur de père (1961) opposite Debbie Reynolds, the quality of his films fell off drastically as he found himself top-lining such innocuous fare as Commando Bikini (1963), Ride the Wild Surf (1964) (1965), War-Gods of the Deep (1965) [aka War-Gods of the Deep], and Birds Do It (1966) both here and overseas. As for stage, a brief chance to star on Broadway happened in 1964 alongside the highly volatile Tallulah Bankhead in Tennessee Williams's "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore." It lasted five performances. He then started to travel the dinner theater circuit. Enduring a severe lull, Tab bounced back in the 1980s and 1990s -- more mature, less wholesome, but ever the looker. He gamely spoofed his old clean-cut image by appearing in delightfully tasteless John Waters' films as a romantic dangling carrot to heavyset transvestite "actress" Divine. Polyester (1981) was the first mainstream hit for Waters and Tab went on to team up with Allan Glaser to co-produce and co-star a Waters-like western spoof Lust in the Dust (1984).Tab still worked as a film producer at age 70+ in Southern California. Tab also "came out" with a tell-all memoir on his Hollywood years in October of 2005. His long-time partner was film producer Allan Glaser.Tab died on July 8, 2018, in Santa Barbara, California, three days shy of eighty seven years old. His last film role was Dark Horse (1992). - IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Fan Zone

Streaming Availability

Amazon Video has the most number of Tab Hunter’s flixes, followed by YouTube compared to other streaming platforms. See the full graph below.

Releases by Year

Tab Hunter on average has worked on 1 movies per year from 1971 to 2015. See the full graphs of the number of Tab Hunter movies released per year from 1972 till 2015.

Top Genres

Tab Hunter works mostly in Documentary Genre followed by Drama Genre flixes. 31% of Tab Hunter movies are Documentary Genre movies. See Top Genres that Tab Hunter worked on in the graph below.

Average IMDB Score

On average the IMDB score of the movies that Tab Hunter has worked on is 6.2.

6.2 / 10

Tab Hunter's Movies and Tv Series available to Stream now ..

Biography,Documentary
Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)

The story of matinee idol Tab Hunter from teenage stable boy to closeted Hollywood star of the 1950s.

7.6/1090 min

Available in 6 platform(s).

A suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.

6.9/1086 min

Available in 9 platform(s).

A group of unscrupulous characters seek buried treasure in the old west.

6.3/1084 min

Available in 9 platform(s).

A girl captures a black stallion to compete in a contest.

5.8/1089 min

Available in 7 platform(s).

Horror,Thriller
Sweet Kill (1972)

Horror and suspense in the story of a psychotic maniac who literally "loves" women to death.

5.1/1085 min

Available in 1 platform(s).

A gang of crazed punkers breaks into a family's vacation home in the mountains and slaughters the entire family, except for one daughter who gets away. As the gang pursues the girl through ...

4.3/1089 min

Available in 3 platform(s).