Tab Hunter Confidential opens with a raid on a gay cocktail party, in which the then-virtually-unknown Tab Hunter was arrested for disorderly conduct (you know, being gay). In just a few years, Tab Hunter would sign a contract with Warner Brothers as an All American heterosexual boy, the kind girls took home to their mother. He would star in a series of romantic movies, and have a public relationship with Natalie Wood. But, he was actually gay, and trained himself to compartmentalize his personal and his public in a career where the personal is almost always public.

The difficulty of Tab Hunter Confidential is that its trying to be a personal memoir from an actor who doesn’t seem comfortable discussing his personal life. Director Jeffrey Schwarz has to perform a high wire juggling act of informing viewers who Tab Hunter was without boring the readers, recapping the publicity without giving it too much credence, and interjecting the intimate from a person who seems like he’d rather be left alone. Hunter was so big that Warner Brothers started their record company to cancel his contract with Dot Records, yet Rock Hudson is the image that survived. I’d most known Tab Hunter for his turn in John Waters’ Polyester, where he subverted his Hollywoodized All-American image in a movie made to subvert Hollywood’s constructions of life.

60 years after Hunter found himself sneaking around to date some of Hollywood’s biggest stars (and closet cases), The Fame Closet is still being enforced. I remember hearing that, for romantic leads, being an out homosexual is career suicide because nothing kills the audience faster than women knowing they could never get with the actor in real life. Heck, Bret Easton Ellis was still tweeting about this dichotomy just this decade. Though, that line is finally starting to fade.

Through the story of a studio-contracted star, Schwarz gives us insight into how the Hollywood system manipulates reality to suit their bottom line. Through a known outcome, Schwarz discusses the studio manufacturing a fantasy through the media to better inflate their bottom line. Schwarz keeps things light and fluffy, with a still-charismatic actor and voice telling his own story. Tab Hunter Confidential is a required viewing for anybody interested in the Hollywood system of old.

Tab Hunter Confidential streams on Netflix.