The next beautiful blond man that caught my eye after Carlton Carpenter was Arthur Andrew Kelm. Little did I know that the rumors about him were true and that photos of Tab with the late Tony Perkins. (I say "late" lest you think that the theofascistic
current Tony Perkins, head honcho at an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has put on its "Hate Groups" list. They spend small fortunes on efforts to stop same sex marriage, but they lost the battle before they started it.) I have to think I first saw Tab in the war movie,
Battle Cry, which outdid The Passion of Christ and The Last Temptation of Christ in pre-release publicity. The scenario went kind of like this:
Fellow Student: Hey, man, have you seen that new movie, Battleground?
Student: No, why, is it good?
Fellow Student: It's really cool. It's this war movie and there's a scene in there where one platoon is saluting the other platoon. Giving them the finger, man. No movie's ever shown
that.
And I do not think any other movie
had shown that. Indeed, it comes well into the film, when some exhausted new recruits stop to rest only to see another, rival platoon march by, and if you know ahead of time to watch for it, one of the resting troops gives the Holy Trinity to the passers-by. But to me, the irony is in Tab Hunter working with the All Man macho moviemaker, Raoul Walsh, and the irony of my not knowing until reading a biography of Tony Perkins (the guy who acted in
Psycho, not the psycho dissing same sex marriage for the obscenely named Family Research Council) that the two men would go on studio-arranged double dates. Just in case the tabloids, always lurking the wings, shot photos that night.
How did Tab inspire a drink??
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