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If You Dated Tab Hunter . . .

A date with Tab Hunter could happen without your doing anything drastic, like bleaching your hair or dyeing it darger, remodeling your nose or wearing stilts. For your information, he says: “I seem to go for either sweet young things or sophisticated older women. I keep reading that I’m partial to blondes in small sizes, but it isn’t true. The color of her hair and eyes or her height wouldn’t make any difference to me. It’s the person I’m interested in—just so she’s shaped right. Like a girl. You know?”

If you had a date with Tab Hunter, you would join a charmed but uncrowded circle of girls, Warners’ fair-haired boy is applying himself to his work too seriously to go out “just to be seen,” and he isn’t trying to set any records for playing the field. If he asked you for a date, he would have known you long enough to be sure that the two of you were simpatico, so the odds are that he’d ask you out more than just once.



You’d have plenty of time to plan and anticipate, because he always calls well in advance. His calling would mean that he had some specific fun activity in mind and he wanted you, specifically, to share it. Tab never says, “Let’s do something tonight,” trusting that fate or inspiration will turn up something entertaining and he never calls a girl at random. You’re blissfully aware that it’s you, nobody else, whom he wants to see. And while you’re basking in that pleasurable knowledge, he will ask, “Would you like to go to the theatre Thursday night?” or whatever—but he’ll be definite.

Like as not your date will involve some studio commitment he has. Tab is asked to do such diverse and diverting chores as emceeing a TV show, putting in an appearance at the Hollywood Park race track, disporting his muscular self at benefits of one kind of another and attending Las Vegas openings. Because he likes people too much to enjoy doing things alone, he’d call and say, “I’ve got to do thus and so, and I think we could have a ball doing it together if you’d like to.” And if it’s to be an evening stint, he’ll invite you for dinner first.






He’d be very thoughtful about that dinner, as he is about all phases of a date. He’d ask if there was a particular restaurant you favored or a cuisine for which your mouth watered. You might suggest something that appalled him (Tab detests rich, heavy foods) but he’d take you to the restaurant of your choice without a visible shudder. If you failed to come up with an idea, he’d have thought over what he knew of your likes and dislikes and made a few suggestions of his own. Among his favorites: the Beachcomber . . . rich and heavy, but good.

This boy would make a ready little steady, if you could nail him down. He’s laudably punctual; if he says he’ll pick you up at seven, you can count on it. He’d instantly notice what you wore and express his admiration. He always does. Whether you were single-dating or out with a crowd, he’d be attentive. His long arm reaches out to open every door, his lighter is poised before a cigarette is well out of a girl’s bag. Your comfort and the kind of time you’re having sincerely matter to Tab.






That very attentiveness contains a hint of warning, however. As happens the world over, there might be a girl in the crowd meeting Tab for the first time who considers that scatter of freckles across his cheekbones just too cute for words. Or those extra long, dark lashes. Or his slightly hoarse voice. Or that wide, little-boy grin. Even if she makes it abundantly clear that she thinks he’s the living end, leave it be. His attention isn’t going to stray—you’re his girl for the evening—but if you feel compelled to remind your rival of that fact in certain feline, feminine ways, Tab isn’t going to ask you out again. He hates possessive women. So, even if you’re burned to a crisp, better play it cool.






In return for the very good time he expects to show you, Tab demands very little. Mostly, enthusiasm. You already knew what he had planned for your date—he told you when he called—and if you didn’t feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about it, you shouldn’t have accepted the invitation.

A sense of humor. This guy purely loves to holler and laugh, and it’s impossible not to enjoy his enjoyment. He’s a jokester. Although it’s difficult for him to memorize lines for a scene, he never forgets the punchline of a joke—or claims it for his own. “That’s one of Marilyn Erskine’s stories,” he’ll tell you, adding, “Gee, but she’s a witty girl! When she tells it, its a lot crazier.” Or, quoting writer Jerry Asher, another of his favorite sources, “Jerry must be the funniest man in the world.” Not all of Tab’s handed-down stories are as pure as the driven snow, but not one of them would offend the sensibilities of a young lady out on a first date, either. With him a joke is for laughs, so it’s nothing but funny.






He’d expect you to have that sense of humor handy for the minor crises of life that occur from time to time. Like the goof he made at a spaghetti party he hosted for a bunch of his pals, including the John Ericsons, the Brett Halseys, Dick Clayton, Marla English and Lori Nelson. The kids were all sitting around on his living-room floor, having their dinner off a long, low coffee table, when Tab dumped his whole plate of spaghetti into Lori’s lap. He couldn’t have felt worse, of course—mortified by his own clumsiness, upset about her beautiful dress—and it could have spelled sudden death to an otherwise successful party. Except that the ethereal little Nelson girl has a solid sense of humor.






“Well, gee, thanks!” she said, deadpan. “This dress did need a little something to touch it up, didn’t it?” And holding up a fistful of what she had a lap of, she broke them all up with, “Spaghetti, anyone?”

Tab loved her for that. Instead of wrecking his party, the accident added its own touch of hilarity. He was sure he could do something about the dress and sent Lori to change into a pair of his man-sized Levis and a shirt. Since she’s so small that she has to stand twice to make a shadow, she was in imminent danger of walking right out of the britches every time she took a step, which fascinated Tab’s other guests. They took turns devising reasons why Lori should be up on her feet, both hands occupied with something other than a defensive clutch on her waistband. But she never lost the Levis nor her sense of the ridiculous—one of many reasons why Lori Nelson remains high on the list of Tab’s favorite dates.






If he asked you out dancing, he’d expect you to be a good dancer. This is something Tab really loves and, having the coordination of a natural athlete, does exceptionally well. But don’t be surprised if you don’t do your dancing in one of the more elegant joints on the Sunset Strip. Tab likes to hit spots like Ciro’s and the Mocambo—“when I can afford it,” he says truthfully—but he can be found much more often at small clubs around town where the other bugs are far more interested in his ability to jit than in his name as a movie star. Currently they have something new going called the Bop, which Tab hasn’t yet got down cool. But since the day that he heard about Lori Nelson’s young cousin being hip, he hasn’t given her any peace. “Come on, Lori,” he wheedles, “take some time and learn it from him so you can teach me.”



Assuming that this was your first date with Tab and you wanted to make a memorable impression, you’d go easy on the make-up, wear something tailored in good taste and drop your voice down into low gear. The girl he calls for a second date is going to be conspicuous for nothing in the world except her natural beauty. Sure he’s human, he wants the other guys to notice his date—but not if they’re asking each other, “Who’s the dame in the fright wig, the one with Tab Hunter?”

He’d expect you to curb any tendency you might have toward bossiness. Although he’s good natured about it, Tab won’t hold still for a domineering woman. In the first flush of success, in his fire-engine-red convertible and I’m-sitting-on-top-of-the-world days, before they became interested in a couple of other people, he used to date Debbie Reynolds quite a bit. To call Deb “bossy” would be an exaggeration of the most unfair kind, but leave us face it: she has an orderly mind, she’s a natural-born organizer and she isn’t really happy unless everything runs according to totem. Which is merely intelligent. Only, sometimes a guy feels lazy and relaxed. Regimentation he needs like a hole in the head. This temperamental difference was never a problem with Debbie and Tab. When he had had enough of snapping to and she was still systematically itemizing things to be done, he’d say in his mild, unruffled way, “Hold everything gal, simmer down. This is a date, not the first day at boot camp,” and Debbie’s gamin grin would acknowledge a touché.






You wouldn’t find conversation with Tab a strain. His mother has been ill and he spends a lot of time with her; if you knew him well enough to ask about her, he’d talk about that briefly. “She’s getting so frisky I accuse her of taking hormones.” About sports, certainly—he’s so rabid about horses, skiing, skating and waterskiing that it’s infectious; you’d find yourself wanting to do all those things with him. He might talk about or take you up to see the lot he bought above the Strip, where he hopes to build the house of his dreams someday. It’s a cinch that there’d be some proud reference to the performance of the new, black Thunderbird in which you were riding, and probably a rueful comment, like, “I wish I owned it instead of its owning me.” If you brought the subject up, you might spend the whole evening in absorbing shop talk. Or purely topical chatter. “I’m just an ordinary guy, and there aren’t any subjects that I ride, particularly,” Tab explains. “Whatever interests everyone else at the moment interests me, too.”



Don’t count either on being alone with him or on joining a group of friends; as far as Tab’s concerned, it depends entirely on what’s doing. If you did join a group, though, you’d find your date is an ideal guest, pitching in more than his share of the work, entering into the spirit of things with a zest that fairly sings out his joy of living. You’d find, too, that he’s as popular with the other guys as with the gals. Not because he’s a chest-pounding Man’s Man, but because he’s kind and considerate of all pepole.

“I hate a girl to be embarrassed by those stories—is she the one I’m going to marry—that come out every time I start dating someone new. Why do I have to get married? And, while we’re on the subject, how could I get married? You know how much money I’ve got in my savings account? Fifty-four dollars! And they try to marry me off . . . Honestly!”



If something caused him to suspect that you’re gullible, you’d find Tab a terrible tease on a date. In Anna Maria Alberghetti he netted himself a perfect foil for his gentle spoofing. The little Italian soprano, who is fulfilling her early promise of becoming one of the great beauties of Hollywood, is still wide-eyed over this country. She still gets a charge out of mere window-shopping, marvels over the gimcracks that pass for souvenirs, and will accept the tallest tale in the world as gospel truth because in America anything is possible. Everybody knows that.

Tab’s devilment for the day, therefore, was to acquaint her with the wondrous history of old Malibu—the history itself not being very old, since he made it up as he went along. “Do you realize,” he asked in a properly subdued voice, “that Balboa was standing on this very rock when he discovered the Pacific?”



Anna Maria, seated on a perfectly ordinary rock nowhere near the location of Balboa’s discovery, gave a nervous little start. “Ought I then to be sitting on it?”

“Aw, sure,” Tab said grandly. “They just don’t want you chipping pieces off. Everybody who wants a souvenir starts chipping away, and pretty soon there’s no more historical landmark.”

“Of course,” she murmured, duly impressed.

“And you see that spot up there?” He pointed it out with a cavalier disregard for the fact that Little Big Horn always has been and still is situated in Montana. “Well, that’s where General Custer made his last stand against the Sioux Indians led by Chief Sitting Bull. Let’s walk up; I want you to see it.”



“I have read about that,” Anna Maria stated—and if Malibu didn’t figure in the account that she read, she was far too polite to say so. Besides, this tall, tanned American certainly ought to know about the history of his own country. She tiptoed over the hallowed ground as if she walked on eggs.

Taberoo was having a ball, though he nearly got caught up in his role of Baron Munchausen when they visited the general store in the little seaside colony. Anna Maria, attracted by a vivid display of postcards, read the legend on each and every one, a faint frown wrinkling her brow. “Is it not strange,” she asked, “that they do not mention the rock of Balboa or even General Custer?”



He had to think fast, but he sounded elaborately casual. “Well, you know how people are. They sort of take things for granted after awhile. I mean, everybody knows about it, so they figure that they don’t have to keep saying it over and over. Look, they’ve got some coonskin caps. Ever see a coon?”

Her attention diverted, Anna Maria admitted that she had not. “Very ferocious animals,” Tab commented and proceeded to tell her a pack of lies about how raccoons hung from trees by their tails and dropped on unsuspecting people, strangling them with the aforementioned caudal appendages.

“Oh, so?” She was round-eyed.

“Sure. That’s the reason the coonskin cap is associated with Davy Crockett. He was about the only man who could best a coon, and he wore the skin to prove it.”



“But there are so many caps now—”

Tab leaned in close. “Ummm, nice perfume. They’re not really coonskin,” he whispered confidentially. “Matter of fact, coons are so mean that they’ve been killing each other off for years, and by now they’re almost as extinct as the buffalo.”

And more . . . The seal they fed in the tank got her respectful attention because it was the oldest one in the world. Couple of hundred years old, maybe. And when Anna Maria decided to try her luck fishing off the pier, Tab thought he’d better lend her a little muscle for protection, because, “You might hook a shark seven or eight feet long that would pull you right off the pier.” It was a baldfaced untruth for which the Malibu Chamber of Commerce would not have thanked Tab—but it gave him such a splendid opportunity to put his arms around a very beautiful girl whose breeding would not have permitted so much intimacy otherwise. When he delivered her back home, Anna Maria thanked him for a most pleasant and educational day, and Tab said gravely that he thought they ought to do it again sometime soon. He added, “I’d like to call you again, if I may.” He did—and you can bet that the first thing he did when he saw Anna Maria again was to tell her the truth, knowing they could laugh about it together, knowing they were simpatico.

THE END

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1955