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Since the dawn of broadcast television in the late 1940s NBC had always aired a musical/variety series on Sundays from 8:00PM-9:00PM. Among these Sunday night programs were Sunday Showcase, Colgate Comedy Hour, and The Steve Allen Show. For a few months during the 1958-1959 season, however, a drama series entitled Pete Kelly's Blues had filled the 8:30PM-9:00PM timeslot and NBC decided to stick with the idea of scripted shows on Sunday.

During the 1959-1960 season, Sunday Showcase, a variety/anthology series, aired in the timeslot, but was cancelled in May of 1960. The Tab Hunter Show premiered at 8:30PM on Sunday, September 18th, 1960, following the premiere of another new NBC series, National Velvet. Both shows were up against the popular The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS; National Velvet also aired against the last half of Maverick on ABC while The Tab Hunter Show aired against ABC's The Lawman.

The two shows were part of NBC's programming strategy for the 8:00PM-9:00PM timeslot on Sunday evenings. National Velvet returned for the 1961-1962 season airing on Mondays. The Tab Hunter Show was cancelled after its first season. A total of 32 half-hour episodes of The Tab Hunter Show were broadcast. The series was produced by Norman Tokar and was sponsored by the P. Lorillard Company.

It was the first starring television role for Tab Hunter, the teen heartthrob who starred in Damn Yankees! in 1958. His previous television appearances were guest roles on anthologies such as Playhouse 90 and Climax!. In The Tab Hunter Show, Hunter played Paul Morgan, a cartoonist who created and draws the wildly popular "Bachelor-at-Large" comic strip.

The strip focused on a young bachelor living in sunny Malibu, California, who loved life and women. Of course, the bachelor in "Bachelor-at-Large" is none other than Paul Morgan. The adventures in the semi-autobiographical strip mirrored Paul's life, as he enjoyed himself in Malibu with his good friend Peter Fairfield, III (Richard Erdman) and lots and lots of women.

Seven years before they appeared together in The Tab Hunter Show, Tab Hunter and Richard Erdman co-starred in the 1953 film The Steel Lady, about a bunch of oilmen who find a tank in the desert, repair it, and find themselves fighting for their lives.

Peter Fairfield, III was also a bachelor, a rich young man with a passion for fast cars. Paul and Peter would regularly find themselves in sticky situations, usually involving a good looking girl. The tale would then find it's way into "Bachelor-at-Large" for the enjoyment of the strip's readers.

Paul's boss, John Larsen (Jerome Cowan), is usually blown away by the crazy antics that Paul and Peter get themselves into, but "Bachelor-at-Large" is a popular strip. Thus, Larsen has to continually hound Paul to actually get his strips in on time. Also appearing in the series was Reta Shaw as Paul's housekeeper, Thelma, who disapproved of his lifestyle but stayed on the job nevertheless.

The episodes, as to be expected, were centered around a girl. The girl-of-the-week could be found in California, in London, Paris, Spain, on a train or on a boat. It didn't matter where he was, Paul Morgan managed to run into a beautiful girl.

And usually he went from girl to girl to girl, sometimes within one episode. Several famous, and good-looking, actresses guest-starred on The Tab Hunter Show, including Mary Tyler Moore, Elizabeth Montgomery, Tuesday Weld, Suzanne Pleschett, Gena Rowlands and Joan Staley. Occasionally, the female guest stars were credited as simply "Blonde" or "Brunette" to reflect the bachelor ideal of beautiful girl - name not important.

On a regular basis, the episodes took place in other countries, as Paul routinely went on vacation. For example, one episode saw Paul falling for a matador while in Spain, while another found him falling for British nobility on the way to Europe, and another involved an author in France. For the episodes that took place back in California, many of them involved Larsen fighting to get Paul to work.

In one episode, Larsen hires a female cartoonist to try to force Paul to get his strips done, thinking that being one-upped by a girl would do the trick. You can probably imagine how that one turned out. In another episode, Paul gets an assistant - a girl who is too annoying to work with.

Additional episodes involved a Hollywood starlet trying to commit suicide, Paul being sued by a girl who insists that a character in "Bachelor-at-Large" is based on her, and Paul's speaking engagement at an all-women's college. Following the demise of The Tab Hunter Show in September of 1961, NBC continued to air scripted shows from 8:30PM-9:00PM (Wonderful World of Disney aired from 7:30PM-8:30PM).

Watch Tab Hunter, in character as Paul Morgan, explain what the show is about. This is from a rare, 1960 promo/preview for The Tab Hunter Show. When the series was originally announced in March of 1960 it was to be titled the series was to be titled "Bachelor-at-Large" (the name of the comic strip) but that was changed within a month.

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Last Updated April 26th, 2006