Obituary: Tab Hunter

Actor Tab Hunter, an actor popular in the 1950s and 1960s and later revealed his struggles of being a gay man in Hollywood, has died.  He was 86 years old.  According to his spouse, Hunter had a blood clot in his leg, which in turn caused him to have cardiac arrest.

Hunter also tried his hand at music. He came up with a note-for-note remake of the classic Sonny James song, "Young Love."  It was a hit for him.

Snip:

Hunter was born in 1931 in New York City, the second son of a mechanic and his German immigrant wife. His father left the family two years later and the boy took his mother's name, Gelien. Young Arthur Gelien grew up in San Francisco and Long Beach, California, and joined the Coast Guard at 15, lying about his age.

While in New York, he saw Broadway plays and became interested in acting. Back in California, Willson arranged for a two-word role in a small Western, "The Lawless." He got $500 and a new name.

In his memoir, he said that his career flourished despite some innuendo and smear articles in the scandal sheets — "clear evidence that despite its self-righteous claims, 'Confidential' magazine did not influence the taste and opinions of mainstream America."

I

returned to Reno from going the "long way" through Sacramento and up I80 over Donner Summit. It takes two hours longer than going the shortcut through McCloud and Susanville, but I felt like going that way.

I somehow managed to get up enough energy to go down to Best Buy and pick up the first season set of Father Knows Best, a show I haven't seen since it was syndicated in the 1960s. I have heard some of the episodes are edited ones because the available unedited prints were not very good. I guess Sony owns the rights to the original prints, but it won't release them, so we consumers are stuck with imperfect copies. Still, this is the only way to get it.

One of the actors in the show, Lauren Chapin, who became a born-again Christian quite a few years ago after having many personal problems, has an official website up on the series.

I also spent some time picking up some compilations of 1950s and 1960s hits. I have tons of CDs, which I won't get rid of, and I intend on continuing to buy them even as I do have iPods and such. I like the tangible. Anyway, there were some songs I wanted on them, including "Time Won't Let Me," by the Outsiders; "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," by Manfred Mann; "It's Only Make Believe" by Conway Twitty; and both hit versions of "Young Love" by Sonny James and Tab Hunter. Since I have a wide variety of songs and genres on my iPod, I thought by having both versions of "Young Love" would cover both kinds of young love, though Hunter's version didn't change the lyrics of James' version. If I have to explain this, well, shit, take a look at this site.

Anyway, that's about it for me. I am feeling pretty faint.