Tab Hunter on being a movie star: ‘big deal’
When Tab Hunter died, reader Dan Blackwelder lost a dear friend. Hunter and his partner, Allan Glaser, always stayed with Blackwelder when they were in town.
“He really didn’t take himself very seriously,” says Blackwelder, “and he especially didn’t take very seriously all that movie star nonsense. He had a very clear sense of what that was all about.”
On one occasion, Blackwelder was with Hunter at an event at the Balboa Theatre. After a Q&A, one of his old movies was to be shown. When Hunter made his way back to a seat, Blackwelder whispered, “Do you want to stay for the movie?” Hunter whispered back, “Hell, no, I can’t act.”
When an overflow crowd showed up at a 2015 Castro Theatre showing of the documentary “Tab Hunter Confidential,” “Tab was very moved and humbled,” said Blackwelder. At the same time, when the documentarians observe that everyone who ever met him fell in love with him, his response was modest. “This is my life,” he said. “Big deal.”
Hunter’s obituary mentioned that he spent part of his childhood in San Francisco. As a teen, he worked at the Bull Pup Enchilada stand at Ocean Beach and practiced ice skating at the long-gone rink on 48th Avenue.
P.S.: A November 2003 item reported that one night Hunter went to see “Beach Blanket Babylon,” and rocker
Sammy Hagar happened to be in the audience, too. Hagar took his place in a line of fans waiting for Hunter’s autograph.
Rena Bransten Gallery had a full house for the Saturday, July 7, opening of “The Portrait Show” at the Minnesota Street Project. It’s a group show that includes works by some well-known artists — Robert Arneson, Dawoud Bey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rupert Garcia, Bovey Lee, Vik Muniz, Lava Thomas, John Waters among them — riffing on the idea of self. Some works are autobiographical, some not.
Bransten, who has been a gallerist in San Francisco for 44 years, is well known to art lovers. The image in the show that really made me smile is based on a photograph of her, cut out with its silhouette affixed to a board by Hung Liu probably 25 years ago, for some major birthday or other, said her daughter and co-gallerist, Trish.
It’s a work made from a photograph of Rena Bransten as a little girl dressed as Snow White, looking at the camera with eyebrows knit in a fierce expression. I wasn’t the only gallery-goer who asked her to pose for a picture while standing in front of it. She couldn’t resist mimicking the facial expression in the work. “I don’t know why, but I always looked angry,” she said.
Let’s not call it anger; let’s call it a portrait of the early years of a woman who’s not willing to settle for anything less than wonderful.
Students from the Academy of Art University have painted an eight-story-high mural at the Cova Hotel at 655 Ellis St. in the Tenderloin. There’s a free community reception there at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 12, when the mural will be formally unveiled.
Spotted around town last weekend: actor Josh Brolin, who was staying at the Sir Francis Drake and dined Sunday, July 8, at Boulevard. He was said to be “super nice.”
For a sophisticated musical experience, don’t miss musician Matt Nathanson and Spearhead’s Michael Franti and J. Bowman’s kazoo rendition of “Purple Rain.” It’s part of a MustKazoo challenge organized by Music in Schools Today, which supports music education for young people. The group is raising money by asking individuals and groups to video themselves playing kazoo and submit the videos to its website, along with a donation (as small as a dollar). The board has promised to match donations up to $100,000.
It’s an imaginative campaign, certainly more sensible than dumping a bucket of ice on one’s head.
Travel writer Carole Terwilliger Meyers, whose website is Berkeley and Beyond, sends along this vacation tip for those driving to and fro from Southern California: It costs more than a dollar a gallon more to gas up in Santa Monica than it does to refuel in Santa Nella, in Merced County along Interstate 5.
Anti-malware software maker EnigmaSoft, apparently interested in the leisure habits of crooks, has found that during World Cup soccer games, malware infections around the world drop by 20 percent. The country with the biggest drop (41 percent) is Uruguay. England (17 percent) had the smallest, but no doubt that figure has risen since England made it up the championship ladder.
The survey found that the only participating country where the malware rates didn’t go down was Russia, where they increased by almost 6 percent.
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING Woman to dining companion: “Are you lactose intolerant?” Man, responding about his partner: “No, he’s just intolerant.” Conversation overheard at dinner in the East Bay by Dan Wohlfeiler