Sal Mineo

I saw Rebel Without A Cause at a film festival dedicated to the 50s when I was a teenager. I was awestruck by the love triangle that was at the core of the film. It din't involve two boys fighting over a girl: it involved a boy and a girl seeking the affection of a boy. The hugely charismatic actors who formed this revolutionary trio all died young and had violent deaths. They were James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. The latter is today's topic.

Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. (January 10, 1939 – February 12, 1976), was born in the Bronx, the son of coffin makers Josephine (née Alvisi) and Salvatore Mineo, Sr. He was of Sicilian descent; his father was born in Italy and his mother, of Italian origin, was born in the United States. His mother enrolled him in dancing and acting school at an early age. He had his first stage appearance in Tennessee Williams' play The Rose Tattoo (1951). He also played the young prince opposite Yul Brynner in the stage musical The King and I. Brynner took the opportunity to help Mineo better himself as an actor.

As a teenager, Mineo appeared on ABC's musical quiz program Jukebox Jury, which aired in the 1953-1954 season. Mineo made several television appearances before making his screen debut in the Joseph Pevney film Six Bridges to Cross (1955). He beat out Clint Eastwood for the role. Mineo had also successfully auditioned for a part in The Private War of Major Benson (1955), as a cadet colonel opposite Charlton Heston.

Mineo's star-making turn came in 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, where he portrayed Plato, a bullied teen, understandably lovestruck at the first sight of James Dean’s character. The role would earn him an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor and establish him as a major heartthrob to teenagers of the era. The next year he appeared in a small role in another Dean film, Giant.

As good friend of the column, Record Man, has recently remarked, "Sometime in the 50s it became de rigueur for movie/tv personalities to put out records regardless of their singing capabilities. Teens were becoming a desirable demographic sales-wise as they had the disposable money the companies coveted." It was true for Mineo, although he was more successful than most.

His first hit, Start Movin' (In My Direction), released early 1957 made the US Top 10, at #9:

The B-Side, Love Affair, also received its share of attention:

Lasting Love was his second hit, peaking at #27:

Party Time, released in late 1957, only made #45:

His last single to chart, Little Pigeon, also peaked at #45 in early 1958:

Also In 1958 he released his one and only album, called Sal. From this album, here's Down By The Riverside:

Now And For Always was another song in this album:

In 1959 he released the single Make Believe Baby / Young As We Are. It didn't chart, but the B-side comes with this charming video:

In the meantime, he had more film hits. In 1956 his role as a criminal in the movie Crime in the Streets earned him the nickname the "Switchblade Kid". During the same year, he also appeared alongside Paul Newman and Pier Angeli in Somebody Up There Likes Me. In 1958 he had a hit with Disney's Tonka and in 1959 he had the title role in The Gene Krupa Story. It was in 1960 with Otto Preminger's Exodus that he had another prestige hit. He won a Golden Globe Award and received another Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role as a Jewish emigrant in the film.

By the early 1960s, he was becoming too old to play the type of role that had made him famous and work was more difficult to get. For example, he auditioned for David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), but was not hired.

Through the 1960s and early ’70s, Mineo occasionally landed small roles in studio films like The Longest Day (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and costarred in the entertainingly-deranged cult film Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965) opposite Elaine Stritch. He found consistent work performing guest spots on television series, such as The Patty Duke Show and Combat! In 1969, he directed and starred in the Los Angeles production of the queer-themed prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes opposite a very young Don Johnson. During much of the 1960s, Mineo had been involved with actress Jill Haworth, whom he met while filming Exodus and who’d gain fame as the first Sally Bowles in the musical Cabaret.

Mineo and Haworth were together on-and-off for many years, even getting engaged to be married at one point, though she canceled the engagement when she became aware of an affair Sal was having with teen idol Bobby Sherman. They did remain very close friends until Mineo's death.

Mineo expressed disapproval of Haworth's brief relationship with the much older television producer Aaron Spelling. Haworth was 20 and Spelling was 42. One night when Mineo found Haworth and Spelling at a private Beverly Hills nightclub, he walked up and punched Spelling in the face, yelling, "Do you know how old she is? What are you doing with her at your age?"

Rumors linked him romantically with co-stars James Dean, Paul Newman and Don Johnson, but I haven't come across conclusive evidence for any of these stories.

In a 1972 interview with Boze Hadleigh, Mineo discussed his bisexuality. At the time of his death, he was in a 6-year relationship and was living with male actor Courtney Burr III.

On the night of February 12, 1976, Sal Mineo returned home following a rehearsal for the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. After parking his car in the carport below his West Hollywood apartment, the 37-year-old actor was stabbed in the heart by a mugger who quickly fled the scene. Police pursued all kinds of leads but assumed the crime to be the result of some sort of “homosexual motivation.” Three years later, pizza deliveryman Lionel Ray Williams was convicted of the murder, in addition to a number of local robberies. Williams, who claimed he had no idea who the actor was at the time of the stabbing, had bragged about the murder and his wife later confirmed that on the night Mineo died, Williams had come home with blood on his shirt. He was paroled in the early 1990s.

It is a little-known fact that Sal Mineo was the model for The New Adam, a colossal 8-foot-tall by 39-foot-long male nude painting (1962), precisely and sensually rendered in full frontal anatomical detail over nine linen panels by artist Harold Stevenson (b. 1929). Since 2005 the painting has been part of the permanent collection of the New York City Guggenheim Museum.