In what feels like another galaxy far, far away a Hollywood celebrity once raised awareness for mental health in a P.S.A. asking you to join the fight against mental illness, despite the fact that the same actor would be described as “mentally ill” if the truth was revealed about his lifestyle.
Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter the blue-eyed dreamboat whose square-jawed image graced the walls of countless teenage girls bedrooms also lived in the shadows of homophobic mid-century America. In fact the screen idol often went out on dates with glamor-pusses like Debbie Reynolds, arranged by the studio and lapped up by the movie magazines.
But he shared more with Carrie Fisher than just dating her Mom.
He too was an advocate for mental illness, born of having had to tragically commit his beloved mother Gertrude to a psychiatric institution, and later made a Public Service Announcement for the Mental health Association that offered national awareness and compassion for the mentally ill.
Disordered Thinking
“The Pleasure of his Company” 1961 movie. Tab Hunter was often seen “dating” his co-star Debbie Reynolds after her divorce from Eddie Fisher. For Tab, the public pleasure of a man’s company was more than taboo, it was a sign of a disabling disorder.
It was a good and earnest thing he did of course. But it is a tad ironic that in the late 1950’s when this Public Service Announcement was made, Tab, a gay man, would have been regarded as being mentally ill by this same Mental Health Association. It wasn’t until 1973, a scant 4 years before Princess Leia graced our screen, that the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
The tragedy is, unlike Carrie Fisher who was open and unabashed about her very real mental illness, a homosexual Hunter had to conceal a part of himself that was not in fact a mental illness, but would have been perceived as so by an uneducated public if he revealed it.
File this in the too ironic to be true but it is department.
You May Also Enjoy
Carrie Fisher May Her Force be With Us
Envisioning The American Dream 
Please read my blogs & leave your invaluable remarks
LikeLike
Thanks for posting these stories Sally. Maybe it will start people thinking and reflecting on life.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That would be my hope
LikeLiked by 1 person
People should start thinking before…it’s too late.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pingback: Carrie Fisher- May Her Force Be With Us | Envisioning The American Dream
Your wonderful post here Sally reminded me too of another invaluable human being that SAVED so many lives during WW2 with his genious… Alan Turing, who after the war was pharmaceutically (and socially?) (mis)treated for his homosexuality as if it were a mental-illness rather than purely biological prenatal DNA. 😦
It is way overdue for our societies and elitist groups to completely abandon binary paradigms inside a world and existence that is CLEARLY anything but!
Wonderful post Sally! Thank you. ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Alan Turing’s story is indeed a tragic story. I fear under Trump/ Pence regime there will be a roll back to a less enlightened time. Pence has already made it clear that there will be an anti LGBT agenda
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. 😦 I have SO MANY dear friends in the LGBT community that have every right, every hint of reasonable concern or fear for their basic human rights, let alone freedom expression on private properties within private settings. For public speakings and/or peaceful protests… absolutely anyone, even those some of us despise, have just as much a right to speak and/or march as us “normal” ones!? 😮
Yet, I’ve learned thru the unbelievable generous help and life-experiences of those individuals many consider to be “abnormal” or mentally unstable(?), how utterly INVALUABLE they were/are to us, to me, and to my own family members! If I may Sally, case and point…
http://wp.me/p1uLmp-2q
It was because of the awful things they’ve been put through & endured much of their life that we/I were not alone — we had someone who had experienced the SAME level of adversities, if not more.
Thanks again Sally. ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fascinating and important post you shared about those born intersexed, and the fact that is is not as rare as we are lead to believe
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you kindly Sally. Yes, intersexed births are fortunately becoming more understood, educated, and made aware to apathy and/or ignorance. The prenatal implications of intersexed conditions on so many antequated social norms and “traditions” are huge! I’d go further in saying they logically undermine most ALL Abrahamic doctrines and theologies making them quite erroneous and ill-founded. 🙂
Are you familiar with the Guevedoces children in the Dominican Republic or other parts of the world?…
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981
Just another literal undeniable example life IS RARELY black or white. ❤
LikeLike
For Sally and anyone interested…
This is an excellent article for those of us without any hint of any degree of mental-illness and start on how to recognize the difference between mental-illness and simple misguided misbehavior. Sometimes it simply takes more patience, more empathy, and less hyper-judgement to begin understanding the human brain and its neurological system.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-is-he-thinking/201612/the-decline-empathy-and-the-appeal-right-wing-politics
Thanks Sally. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the interesting link
LikeLiked by 1 person
Way to bring awareness to mental illness. As one who works in such environment there is always more to learn.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We should always be wiling to re-evaluate instilled notions and grow
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree
LikeLike
Leftist cultural Marxist BS. Homosexuality is a mental illness and social disease spread by ignorant druggies possessed by sexually perverse demons. Zionist/Jesuit Bolshevism/Liberation theology used to overthrow the American psychiatric association with their BS unfounded science straight from the Jewish Frankfurt school of cultural Marxism and its Freudian twin sister the Tavistock mental warfare institute who both swore the destruction of white christian western civilization.
LikeLike
Your piece reminds me of another tragic figure from that era: Montgomery Cliff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, his was a tragic story
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a sad truth.
LikeLike
Great blog post! definitely something that interests me. Im new to blogging, would you mind following me and checking out my own too? Great Read! x Bex
LikeLike