Sal Mineo

Boy oh boy, did he want to become a movie star.  Did he ever.  At a point in time, it's all he could think about.  There would be a time that his motivation was to make it about the work itself, but in the beginning and for some time afterward, it was about the money and the perks and the fame.  And he didn't want the bucks just for himself but for his family as well.  He wanted them to have luxuries and respect and pampering.  He knew that when his family said their last name was Mineo others would say... are you related to Sal Mineo?  What could be any better?


He was born in 1939 in Harlem.  The Mineo family was Italian through and through.  Papa was from the old country and Mama was American-born.  The old man made coffins.  There would be four children.  Sal had two older brothers and a younger sister.  As the third-born son, tradition apparently dictates, he's to be named after his father so Salvatore Jr. it was.  It was a big, warm family... they may have had frequent attitude adjustments but they were crazy about one another.

By the age of eight, Sal and family had moved to the Bronx and though he was short (his adult height would max out at 5'6") and skinny, he was tough and frequently in trouble.  He was thrown out of parochial school and at one time was a member of a street gang.  He was arrested at 10 years of age for robbery.  The law gave him a choice of juvenile detention or acting classes.  Mama enrolled him in the latter along with dance classes.

That choice not only straightened up the wild child but became his ticket for the future.  By 1951 he was appearing on Broadway in not one but two plays... The Rose Tattoo and as the young prince in The King and I.  He wasn't too enamored of appearing on Broadway but he was quite pleased with his burgeoning homosexuality.  The following year he appeared in a couple of TV movies and it was at this time that he knew he wanted to be a movie star.

Sal continued with his normal life until the day he accompanied his brother Mike to an audition for the movie Six Bridges to Cross (1955).  It is a fictionalized version of the infamous Brink's robbery.  Mike was looking to play the younger version of the character to be played by Jeff Chandler.  When Chandler ended up dropping out, so did Mike.  When Chandler was replaced by Tony Curtis, the audition folks remembered Sal.  He said having dark, curly hair like Curtis' secured his film debut.

Sal's next movie is without question the most famous film he would ever make and his most famous role... as Plato in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).  With teen crime on the rise in America in the first half of the fifties, Warner Bros wanted to cash in, which is how the film came about.  It stars James Dean, wildly famous and mildly infamous from his film debut a year earlier in East of Eden.  In her first grownup role is Natalie Wood as Dean's girlfriend.  Plato is the friend of both of them but he is obviously smitten with Dean's character although one has to read into it because a 1955 film is not about to address gay.  All three are troubled and are on the run as a result of a classmate's death.  

He brings out a vulnerability and a longing in the character that is perfect and Plato's death scene is very touching.  Sal would receive an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.  He would come to say... I started at the top and it was downhill from then on.  A sad postscript to the film, of course, are the tragic deaths of its three leads and also Nick Adams whose purported suicide at 36 is shrouded in mystery.  (Look for a future posting on Adams.)

With James Dean

In later years Sal would tire of talking about Rebel.  He called it Rebel Without a Pause.  He said that's all people wanted to know about him and more specifically about his relationship with Dean.  It's always been assumed that Sal and Dean had an affair.  Others in the know say they did.  Sal was undeniably besotted with Dean but he was all over the map about admitting it.  Depending on his mood... we did, maybe we did, we didn't, it's for me to know... he seemingly loved to tease about it. 

Crime in the Streets (1956) is another look at juvenile delinquency and it would not be the final one for Sal.  In fact, he was so identified with the subject that he became known as The Switchblade Kid.  John Cassavetes stars as a toughie and Sal is his protégé on the mean streets of New York.  Sal's role is small but he makes the most of it particularly in a tense scene with his father.

He had been appearing in far more television than movies and was already wondering why his roles weren't larger after his Oscar nomination.  It's not at all unlikely that news of his homosexuality had leaked out especially since Sal was never as circumspect about it as other actors were.  

He had a small role as a neighborhood friend of boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) and another small role in Giant (1956) as a young Mexican ranch worker who is killed in the war.  He was decidedly pleased to be making another movie with Dean.

He was inconsolable after Dean's death as filming on Giant was winding up.  Mama Mineo was concerned for her son and stepped in and took over in whatever way she could... manager, agent, protector.

Sal had never been top-billed in a film but that was about to change for his next six films.  History has not been particularly kind to any of them.

Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) was a musical about a teen band striving to make the big time.  While Sal was indeed top-billed, the true star was another young actor that teens took to their bosoms, John Saxon.  It had enough music in it that Sal fashioned himself as a singer and even got some hit records out of the deal.

Neither Dino nor The Young Don't Cry, both 1957, were great films but they were certainly entertaining for Mineo fans... and they were growing in leaps and bounds.  It was back to teen crime and Sal's 17-year old baby face, the one who didn't look like he belonged in a thuggish gathering.  But those curls cascading over his forehead made the girls scream.

Sal made some forays into dating girls.  What's a teen idol to do?  He knew it would never be his mainstay but it wasn't as bad as he'd imagined.  He knew it wouldn't be permanent and he knew who and what he fancied.  He liked well-mannered English lads.  He amused himself with a bisexual moniker.  He considered it might make him more marketable despite his gay reputation.

He had to laugh sometimes at his image, though he helped cultivate it.  It was that innocent, boyish look on a slight frame with a ready smile that got people's attention.  It wasn't as he saw himself.  He was a savvy dude, he knew the scene, he knew where he wanted to go.  He was bursting with self-confidence at the time, was ambitious, and he saw his talent as expanding. 

I've always wondered what made him do Tonka (1958).  I've questioned what he was doing in a Disney western at this point in his career, playing an Indian no less... buckskins, bare-chested, braids.  Is this what his fans wanted?  Tonka is the stallion that the Indian brave has captured for his own.  But through an unfortunate incident the horse is sold to the cavalry and is renamed Comanche and becomes the cavalry's only survivor at Little Big Horn.  You know I loved it (thanks, Sal, ol' pal).

Disney didn't like its actors to be hooligans so it was quick (but not quick enough, apparently) to hush up an incident between Sal and costar Rafael Campos who took a dislike to one another and nearly got into a fight.

The Gene Krupa Story

One silly exercise was A Private's Affair (1959), a rom-com that I cannot even muster the charity to save something nice about.  But for a year The Gene Krupa Story (1959) had the distinction of being the second best movie Sal had made.  It would be supplanted by his next one.  Krupa was, of course, the legendary jazz drummer who would make quite a name for himself during the Big Band era.  Sal optioned Krupa's story at a time when he was too young to play him.  But it didn't mean he wouldn't practice the drums consistently for around two years, working often with the legendary drummer and learning his routines.

The fictionalized biography was thoroughly entertaining and it is one of Sal's best roles.  He felt it was his first truly adult role and he was nervous but thrilled to play a real-life person who was still living.  Praise was heaped on him. 

He felt he needed to be seen more, photographed at the clubs.  He went out with two-time costar Susan Kohner, Sandra Dee and Yvette Mimieux.  It was said he was getting a big head, even asking peripheral acquaintances and some studio personnel to call him Mr. Mineo.  He would get over that in time but not before it would get a little worse.

He said of playing Dov Landau in Otto Preminger's all-star production of Leon Uris' major bestseller, Exodus (1960)... I'd have paid them for a part like this.  The mammoth story of the events leading up to the birth of Israel had Sal playing a haunted, hate-filled Auschwitz survivor who was brutalized by the nazis who used him as a woman.  Co-star Eva Marie Saint said he stole the show. 

Publicity for the picture while it was being made was extensive.  Not all was positive but most discussed its authenticity and minutia about the many stars.  It was said Sal chased all the girls.  Hmmm.  Perhaps.  It was likely largely the work of an over-eager publicist.  What he did have, per his own admission years later, was an affair with costar Peter Lawford.

British actress Jill Haworth had her first major role as Sal's ill-fated Jewish girlfriend and they hit it off on screen and off.  She was under personal contract to Preminger and since he didn't particularly like Sal, he didn't like their dating.  In fact, he forbid it for all the good that did.  Occasionally there were whispers about her being 15 years old while Sal was 21.  They went on a whirlwind of press junkets for the film, a few times with Peter and Pat Kennedy Lawford in attendance.

Haworth followed him to New York and then to California and lived with him for several years.  It was a chaste relationship for a couple of years and shortly after they took it further, there were reports of an abortion.  They apparently only half-heartedly discussed marriage... they were having too much fun being young and carefree.

With Exodus costar Jill Haworth

Sal most deservedly got a second Oscar nomination for Exodus.  There was much talk of his winning and he admitted he got a pretty big head about it all.  He had a run-in with his mother and stripped her of all her say-so in his career, which had been considerable.  He went around telling everyone that from now on he was only going to do great roles in quality pictures.  

He was devastated when he lost the Oscar (to Peter Ustinov for Spartacus) and was further distraught when the phone didn't ring.  Due to his life-long outrageous spending, soon he was broke.

To ward off the paucity of cash, in 1963 Sal posed nude for Harold Stevenson's painting The New Adam. Today it is considered one of the great American nudes and is part of The Guggenheim Museum's permanent collection.

While living with Haworth in Malibu in the mid-60's, Sal ran across an unknown Bobby Sherman on the beach and became infatuated with him.  Everything became Bobby this and Bobby that to the general alarm of those around Sal.  Sherman, a talented musician, wanted to break into the music business and Sal put him under a personal contract and set out to make Sherman a star.

One day Haworth came home and apparently discovered Sal and Sherman in bed together and she walked out and never saw Sal again.  As Sherman's career finally took off, he felt he didn't need Sal as much as he thought he did and for sure he knew that Sal's scene was not Sherman's scene.  As word spread throughout those Hollywood Hills about Sal's predilection for men, the chance for great roles in quality films was waning.

He said he was washed-up in the movies but he managed small roles in all-star cast movies such as The Longest Day (1962), Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).  He hated his second Indian role in Cheyenne Autumn and had serious run-ins with irascible director John Ford whom Sal claimed was trying to sabotage his career. Television and plays still paid part of his staggering bills and in 1971 he made his last big-screen movie, Escape from the Planet of the Apes.  It, too, was a small role and of course playing one of the title characters, he was not at all recognizable.

In 1969 he directed and starred in the LGBT play, Fortune and Men's Eyes, a controversial piece about prison life and rape.  Sal played the aggressor and a young Don Johnson the victim.  It was a little ahead of its time, perhaps, and the press attached to Sal personally was a little too notorious for some.  Sal liked to say he didn't care but he knew he didn't like the fact that the phone still wasn't ringing much.

In 1970 Sal began a relationship with actor-model Courtney Burr that would last until the end of Sal's life.  The supposed bisexual phase was over.

In 1972 in Detroit he directed and had a small role in the Gian Carlo Menotti opera, The Medium.   By 1976 he was touring in the play, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead as a bisexual cat burglar.  His personal life became intertwined with the play as it had with Fortune and Men's Eyes but the press this time was most favorable.  I was among the lucky ones to see it in San Francisco.  With that crowd it was a memorable experience and everyone marveled at how good Sal was.

He brought the play to Los Angeles, greatly anticipating what the hometown could do for him, for his standing in the industry, his future.  On February 12, 1976, Sal left the theater and was walking home to his Sunset Strip-area apartment.  He liked to walk and theater and home were close.  As he heading through the parking garage area of his apartment complex, someone jumped out and stabbed him once in the heart.  He died instantly.  Of course it became worldwide news and if part of the focus was about it dealing with a celebrity, another part is that the killer was not caught for three years.

Of course there was a lot of speculation... too much, really, and too tawdry but not unexpected.  Sal's lifestyle, profession and general neighborhood helped fuel scurrilous tales.  But when the killer was finally caught, it was revealed that the man was a major druggie and he killed Sal, not knowing who he was, for money to make a score.

Sal Mineo was 37 years old.

Some time later, a friend of Sal's said that he would have been so pissed off that his attacker didn't know who he was.  I had to smile.

Had he lived, Sal might have found a resurgence in his career.  He was just beginning to think that was the case.  He wasn't particularly thinking acting but rather directing.  He thought he'd enjoyed some beginner's luck in directing plays and was eager to do more of it and hopefully it would parlay into movie directing.  For sure the focus on his personal life would be a whole lot less important if he worked behind the cameras.  I'm guessing it would have worked out.



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