Sal Mineo

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Sal Mineo
Image:SalMineo.jpg
Birth name Salvatore Mineo, Jr.
Born January 10 1939(1939-01-10)
The Bronx, New York City, NY
Died February 12 1976 (aged 37)
West Hollywood, CA
Other name(s) The Switchblade Kid, Jr.
Official site Sal Mineo Website

Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. (January 10, 1939 – February 12, 1976) was a Golden Globe-winning American film and theatre actor, best known 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.

Contents

[edit] Acting career

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 in which he played 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."

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" who becomes the famous horse Comanche. 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."

Image:Salmineo2.jpg
Publicity still from The Gene Krupa Story.

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. He starred as drummer Gene Krupa in the movie The Gene Krupa Story, co-starring Susan Kohner, James Darren, and Susan Oliver, and directed by Don Weis.

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.

By the early 1960s, he was getting too old to play the types that had made him famous and for a variety of reasons was not considered appropriate for leading roles. He auditioned for David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia but was not 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?, co-starring Juliet Prowse, did not seem to help. Although his performance was praised by critics, he found himself typecast anew, now as a deranged criminal. (He never entirely escaped this; one of his last roles was a guest spot on the 1975 TV series S.W.A.T. playing a Charles Manson-like cult leader.) He returned to the stage to produce the gay-themed Fortune and Men's Eyes (1971), 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. A small role in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) as chimpanzee Dr. Milo turned out to be Mineo's last movie appearance.

[edit] Murder

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. He was 37 years old. He was stabbed just once, not repeatedly as first reported, but the blade struck his heart, leading to immediate and massive internal bleeding.

According to Warren Johansson and William A. Percy's Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence, he was murdered under circumstances that suggested "a homosexual motive." Investigators reportedly found gay pornography in his home. Mineo identified himself as bisexual in a 1972 interview, published after his death, but his biography notes that he dated men exclusively in the last years of his short life.

Image:1 Sal Mineo cr.jpg
The footstone of Sal Mineo in Gate of Heaven Cemetery
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 boasted of the crime, which turned out to be a botched mugging. At the time of the murder, Williams had no idea who Mineo was. Williams was paroled in 1990, after serving 12 years, but was jailed numerous times afterwards for parole violations.

Mineo is interred in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York.

[edit] At the opera

A little-known facet of Mineo's career was his involvement with opera. On May 8 1954, he portrayed the Page (lip-syncing to the voice of mezzo-soprano Carol Jones) in the NBC Opera Theatre's production of Richard Strauss' Salome (in English translation), set to Oscar Wilde's play. Elaine Malbin performed the title role, and Peter Herman Adler conducted Kirk Browning's production.

In December 1972, Mineo stage directed Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium, in Detroit. Muriel Costa-Greenspon portrayed the title character, Madame Flora, and Mineo himself played the mute Toby.

[edit] Quote

"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."

[edit] Mineo's legacy

  • Mineo is referenced in a song called "Like a Movie Star" by The 6ths on the album Hyacinths and Thistles: "You'll be James Dean. I'll be Sal Mineo—you can hide me..."
  • Mineo is referenced in the film The Exorcist by Lee J. Cobb's character. Incidentally, Cobb died of a heart attack one day prior to Mineo's death.
  • Mineo is referenced in My So-Called Life episode 1x15, So-called Angels, by Rayanne Graff when Rickie is late for school: "Maybe he's at some Sal Mineo film festival."
  • Mineo is alluded to in the Gilmore Girls "Help Wanted" episode in the second season.
  • Mineo is referenced in a song called "Secret Santa Cruz" by the Minneapolis art-punk band Lifter Puller: "Her name was sally but they all called her Sal Mineo / She was lit up like an arson but she burned out like Arsenio".
  • Mineo is featured as a murderous character in James Ellroy's 2001 novel "The Cold Six Thousand".
  • Mineo is named in the song "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee" in the original stage musical Grease. The movie based on the musical was filmed a year after Mineo's death, so the line was changed to Elvis.
  • In Martin Short, fame becomes me when mentioning who is is show biz heaven, the cast sings "And Lincoln has a crush on poor Sal Mineo"
  • Mineo is referenced in the play "A Tuna Christmas." Didi Snavely berates her husband getting her a Clue game instead of Sal Mineo's Greatest Hits, which she's been dropping hints that she wants for Christmas.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

es:Sal Mineo fr:Sal Mineo io:Sal Mineo nl:Sal Mineo ja:サル・ミネオ pt:Sal Mineo fi:Sal Mineo sv:Sal Mineo

Retrieved from "http://india.smashits.com/wikipedia/Sal_Mineo"
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