Paired with Natalie Wood in 1956 (the new Hepburn-Tracey) in The Girl He Left Behind and The Burning Hills (not up to Hepburn-Tracey)
Gunman's Walk (1958, no father, psychopath, killed by father) directed by Wellman
Portrait of a Murderer (1958, insists on pleading guilty and being electrocuted) directed by Arthur Penn for tv
Damned Yankees (1958, handsome, funny, simple)
That Kind of Woman (1959) with Sophia Loren directed by Sidney Lumet
Judge Roy Bean (1972, bit part, executed),
The Arousers (1973, impotent so kills women)
Polyester (1981, made Tab hip to generation who'd never heard of him, helped Waters legitimize his filmmaking).
Prompted by Waters, he wrote a storyline for a spoof of westerns and finally got funding. Lust in the dust (1984) (Gregory Peck's name for his Duel in the Sun (1947)) is probably the film he is best remembered for .
Tab was best playing Tab/ Hollywood icon, either 'straight' or as parody. Something like the Droste effect, where a picture recursively appears within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. Inside the screen actor Tab is actor Tab playing the actor Tab.
Another Drost moment: When Art/Tab was 16 in the coast guard, his mentor and best friend Clayton invited him to cocktail parties when he was stationed near New York. This dazzling 16-year-old met Cole Porter! 'It was as if I'd gotten out of my seat in one of those Hollywood theaters and walked right into the movie.' A page out of a Woody Allen film.
The would-be straight hero-lover of the likes of Hollywood beauties Linda Darnell, Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren. And great directors -- Penn, Frankenheimer, Wellman, Lumet. He got lots of chances, had every perk that Hollywood offered, but just was no Brando. He blames his failed career on his bad acting, but that was actually what saved him. The higher you climb, the more perilous. Just ask Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins or Rock Hudson.
Though disparaged (his mother told him 'you were terrible'), his best film to me is his first. He was who he would like to be. A platonic vision, a boisterous, pouting, uncouth teen, educated in the school of hard knocks, straight, a military hero (his brother was killed in Vietnam in 1964), a Robinson Crusoe, lover of the Hollywood beauty of the day. His famous kiss with Darnell worked as a fantasy of all guys.
Tab insists he never 'acted straight'.
I was painfully isolated, stranded between the casual homophobia of most 'normal' people and the flagrantly gay Hollywood subculture, where i was even less comfortable and less accepted. I never 'acted' straight to get by. What you saw was what you got. What you didn't see was none of your business.
A Hollywood fluke that is now a metaphor for Hollywood itself.
His most meaningful role artistically, with lots of anguishy overtones, was on Broadway, The Milkman Doesn't Sop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams, with Tallulah Bankhead playing (badly) herself.
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