Tab Hunter got together with Larry King last night to promote his new book, Tab Hunter Confidential : The Making of a Movie Star. Larry and Tab talked about Tab’s first homosexual experiences, his relationship with Anthony Perkins, and the olden days of Hollywood… when studios manufactured celebrity romances for the sake of PR.

KING: Did the studio — in those days were the studios trying to get you to date people?

HUNTER: Well, your job…

KING: And they want your picture in the paper with young single starlets?

HUNTER: Your job when you’re under contract to a studio your job is to do as they say and, my gosh, what young kid wouldn’t want to go out with, you know, on different dates and do this and that. But, Natalie had just — I did two films with Warner Brothers, “Battle Cry” and then “Track of the Cat” for Bill Wellman, the Bob Mitchum film.

KING: I remember.

HUNTER: Then Warner thought what the heck we’ve got him under — we’ve done two pictures, let’s put him under contract. So, they put me under contract, exercised the option, and put me in a film with John Wayne and Lana Turner called “The Sea Chase.”

But, “Battle Cry” went, it skyrocketed so they threw me, they said we’ve got to do something with this kid and Natalie had just finished “Rebel” with Jimmy so we got to do something with her.

So, they threw us together and they were going to make us into the Myrna Loy/William Powell of the ’50s I guess. I don’t know. And we were on every magazine and thrown into all the PR stuff you could possibly imagine.