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22
winter
|
spr ing
T
ab Hunter has lived quietly in Montecito for a
long time. He began visiting the Santa Barbara
area back in the 1950s when he and his horse(s)
showed in the circuit that ran mostly up and down
the California coast. As recently as the 1980s, Montecito itself was
still horse country. Property owners of the time set aside land on the
far reaches of their various properties as communal trails to be used
by fellow horse owners. Much of that changed over the proceeding
thirty years or so, as new owners not interested in riding purchased
and renovated those valuable properties and liability laws and the
concomitant higher insurance costs have made such generosity
and neighborly camaraderie prohibitively costly. One can still see
the occasional horse and rider sauntering along the beach from
Summerland to the Miramar and back, but such bucolic scenes are
becoming a rarity.
What are also becoming rarities are former movie stars who
were groomed and who prospered under what was known as the
Hollywood Studio System, wherein MGM, 20
th
Century Fox,
Paramount, Warner Brothers, and RKO – the five major film studios
at the time, plus a good number of smaller film production houses
– essentially “owned” their stars, at least for the period of their
contract, which frequently could be as long as seven years.
Although MGM was the giant (its boastful motto, “More
Stars Than There Are In Heaven” tells that story), Warner
Brothers fielded its own prestigious firmament of contract
players with names that continue to reverberate with 21
st
century
filmgoers: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart,
Edward G. Robinson, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, John
Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ronald Reagan, James Dean, and Tab
Hunter, among others.
Very few actors and actresses who were once under contract
in Hollywood are still around; Tab Hunter is one of them. We
spent a little time with him at his house in the Montecito foothills
and at a nearby stable where he keeps Harlow, his mare. We hope
you enjoy the transcript of our conversations with him and the
accompanying visuals that help tell the more complete story of
what it was like to be a star in Hollywood, circa mid-1950s.
Of course, we hope you’ll also enjoy Part Two of Lynn Kirst’s
adventures on Santa Rosa Island (“Landmarks”), Eva Van Prooyen’s
outline of Richard Torin’s unique island of rarities: Clarets
(“Behind The Bottle”), and Jeremy Harbin’s profile of another
Montecito resident: former
Cheers
chief writer and executive
producer Cheri Steinkellner (“Profiles”), along with the rest of this
issue’s creative output.
All of which leads us to say, once again: welcome to the
neighborhood.
Tim Buckley
Publisher
Publisher’s Note
A Stable Of Stars