Sal Mineo
Salvatore Mineo, Jr. (
January 10,
1939 â€"
February 12,
1976) was an
American actor and
theater director, famous for his
Academy Award-nominated performance opposite
James Dean in the film
Rebel Without a Cause.
Mineo, born in
The Bronx,
New York City as the son of a
Sicilian coffin maker, was enrolled by his mother in dancing and acting school at an early age.
Mineo had his first stage appearance in
The Rose Tattoo (
1950), a play by
Tennessee Williams. He also played the young prince opposite
Yul Brynner in the stage
musical The King And I.
After a few more film and television appearances his breakthrough was
Rebel Without A Cause (
1955) in which he gave an impressive performance as John "Plato" Crawford, the sensitive teenager smitten with James Dean's Jim Stark. His biographer Paul Jeffers recounted that Mineo received thousands of fan letters from young female admirers, was mobbed by them at public appearances and further wrote, "He dated the most beautiful women in
Hollywood and
New York." On the other hand, in
An Introduction to Film Studies (2003), Jill Nelmes discusses "how gay men derived particular sub-cultural messages from such films as
Rebel without a cause when empathising with the relationship between Jim (James Dean) and Plato (Sal Mineo)." According to Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon's
Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day, Dean's "loving tenderness towards the besotted Sal Mineo in
Rebel without a Cause" touches and excites "gay audiences by its honesty." Mineo was later reunited with Dean in
Giant, although only in a few scenes.
Many of his subsequent roles were variations of his role in
Rebel Without a Cause and he often played juvenile delinquents. In the
Disney adventure
Tonka, for instance, Mineo starred as a young
Sioux named White Bull who traps and domesticates a clear-eyed, spirited wild horse named "Tonka". In his book,
Multiculturalism And The Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment (2006), Douglas Brode states that the very casting of Mineo as White Bull again "ensured a homosexual subtext." By the late
1950s the actor was a major celebrity, sometimes referred to as the "Switchblade Kid."
In
1957, Mineo made a brief foray into music by recording a handful of songs and an album. Two of his singles reached the Top 40 pop charts.
Meanwhile, Mineo made an effort to break his
typecasting. His acting ability and exotic good looks earned him not only roles as a
Native American boy in
Tonka, but also as a
Jewish emigrant in
Otto Preminger's
Exodus for which he received another Academy Award nomination as
Best Supporting Actor (and reportedly was bitterly disappointed when he didn't win.)
By the early
1960s he was getting too old to play the types that had made him famous and for a variety of reasons wasn't considered appropriate for leading roles. He auditioned for
David Lean's film
Lawrence of Arabia but wasn't hired. Mineo was baffled by his sudden loss of popularity, later saying "One minute it seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle, the next, no one wanted me."
His role as a
stalker in
Who Killed Teddy Bear? (
1964) didn't seem to help. Although his performance was praised by critics, he found himself typecast anew, now as a deranged criminal. He returned to the stage to produce the
gay-themed
Fortune and Men's Eyes, starring
Don Johnson of later
Miami Vice fame. Although the play got positive reviews in Los Angeles, it was panned during a run in New York and its expanded prison
rape scene was criticized as excessive and prurient. A string of failed projects and flops followed, with a small role in
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (as
chimpanzee Dr. Milo) turning out to be Mineo's last movie appearance.
By
1976 Mineo's career seemed to be turning around again. Playing the role of a gay
burglar in a
San Francisco run of the stage comedy
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, he received substantial
publicity from many positive reviews and moved on to
Los Angeles with the play. Arriving home after a rehearsal on
February 12,
1976, Mineo was stabbed to death in the alley behind a
West Hollywood apartment building. According to Warren Johansson and William A. Percy's
Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, p.91, he was murdered under circumstances that suggested "a homosexual motive." When he died, Mineo was 37.
A career criminal named Lionel Ray Williams was later sentenced to
life in prison for killing Mineo. Although there was considerable confusion relating to what witnesses had seen in the darkness the night Mineo was murdered, Williams was reported to have frequently boasted of the crime, which appears to have been a botched mugging. Williams was
paroled in
1990 after serving 12 years but was jailed numerous times thereafter for parole violations.
Mineo is interred in the
Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in
Hawthorne, New York.
"No one ever said movies are for developing your range. Hardly anyone gets that opportunity. Which is why I think the stage is so good. It's less bread, but you can play different types, and you can initiate your own projects."
*Frascella, Lawrence and Weisel, Al :
Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause. Touchstone, 2005. ISBN 0743260821
*Gilmore, John :
Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip. Amok Books, 1998. ISBN 1878923080
*Jeffers, H. Paul : Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder, and Mystery. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0786707771
*Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A.
Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994, p.91.
*
Official website*
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Sal Mineo*
Crime Library - Biography, and more detailed discussion of Mineo's murder*
Crime Magazine - The Murder of Sal Mineo*
Transcript of interview with Boze Hadleigh (1972) and Hadleigh's comments following Mineo's death*
GLBTQ Encyclopedia *
"SAL"*
- Spotlight Sal Mineo
