LGBTQ-History Month – (Part 1 of 2)
Preface: Like a small number of other posters, I sometimes write long blog-type articles. Obviously readers can choose whether or not to bother reading them. I have decided the two parts of this and one more dealing with aspects of gay history this month will be my last such long ones. I hope at least some may find these interesting.
February 12 sees several anniversaries. We'll skip over the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and me, and remember only it was the day 50 years in two days time when one of the cutest and most talented screen actors was murdered. Sal Mineo had just driven home from the rehearsal for a play. Walking towards his small one-bedroom West Hollywood apartment to spend the evening unusually alone (his actor boyfriend of six years, Courtney Burr, was due back from New York the following day), he was jumped on in a totally random robbery attempt and stabbed with one fatal knife wound to the heart. He died almost instantly. He was 37.
Gay actors in Hollywood history were virtually all closeted and hard to find unless you were in the movie business. Mineo, though, eventually came out as gay and I find him a hauntingly fascinating, hugely talented, mischievous, mysterious and thus frequently exasperating character. A few readers will remember him, may even have seen him in one of his films, may know that he was gay, this at a time when we are told many actors were either gay or bisexual but totally afraid for this to become known. While Mineo might initially have been bisexual he did come out as gay just at the time when sexual boundaries were being extended and just before the gay world we know today really began. In so many respects he was ahead of his time.
Not well known is that Sal Mineo had an early connection to Thailand. He had been a child star on Broadway playing a pageboy in The King & I. When the boy playing Crown Prince Chulalongkorn fell ill, Sal stepped into his shoes for the rest of the run. He loved performing with Yul Brynner who was to become almost a father figure to him for the next decade of his life.
Scene from the original New York production of The King & I - photo Fred Fehl
His big break as an actor came in films when he played Plato alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in the 1955 movie Rebel Without A Cause. Rebel is a movie about three very alienated teenagers, each misunderstood by their parents who simply do not even try to listen to them and each desperate for someone to care about them. As Dean says when the three are in the darkened castle near the end and they imagine how much better their lives could be, almost pretending to be a family, “Nobody talks to children.” Sal was just 16 at the time of filming. As a result of that movie he became one of the youngest actors ever nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It is now known that Dean was bisexual. It was always assumed that Mineo and Dean had an affair during the filming of the movie. Yet Mineo later acknowledged that at that time “I had no idea or understanding of affection between men.” It was only later that he became bisexual (and even later totally gay) but the Dean rumours persist to this day.
Even so, very brief flings with men were to become a part of his life, even though he initially found them unsatisfying for a number of reasons. Several sources agree Rebel’s director Nicholas Ray, himself bisexual, had sex with his young star even before the start of filming, as it is known he had with Natalie Wood. A screen actress since the age of four, Wood had by then quite a sexual upbringing, one being in an affair with Frank Sinatra when he was 38 and she only 15 after she had been pimped by her Russian mother.
That near kiss at the end of the clip does not appear in the movie which was filmed in colour. For years Mineo claimed that in a way he was seen as the movie world's first gay teenager. As he said in a 1972 interview, “You watch it now, you know he has the hots for James Dean. You watch it now, and everyone knows about Jimmy, so it’s like he had the hots for Natalie and me. Ergo, I had to be bumped off, out of the way.”
It now seems certain Nicholas Ray intended this, as there are many discreet gay references in the movie if you just look for them. Jim offering Plato his jacket in the police station after hearing Plato feels cold even though they do not know each other. The photo of screen idol Alan Ladd in Plato’s locker. After the “chicken” run, Plato looks on Jim as clearly more than just a crush. When he then suggests Jim go home with him to chat, that there is no one else there and they can have breakfast together, it becomes even more obvious. Yet if there had indeed been any relationship between Dean and Mineo as actors it ended suddenly when Dean was tragically killed in a car crash the month before Rebel Without A Cause was released.
Masculinity in movies up to the early 1950s meant essentially John Wayne-type characters. With Marlon Brando in The Wild One in 1953, a new type of masculine youth figure evolved, one that was to develop even further with the three leads in Rebel. Roles for teen actors were no longer thereafter to be relegated to nicely-dressed adjuncts of polite middle-and upper-class families. And rebels were no longer just from poor working class homes. Of the three teenagers, I find Wood the least effective. Although she really was 16 when the movie was filmed, to me she actually looks and acts – and is dressed – more like 26.
Having recently seen the movie, I do not find it quite as iconic as its reputation. Some of Dean’s scenes are definitely overdone while the drama is not always convincing. After the dreadful death of her boyfriend in the game of “chicken”, Wood shows almost no emotion, before instantly transferring her romantic feelings to Dean. That certainly does not ring true. Indeed, none of the gang show any emotion either, despite the horror they have just witnessed. Dean’s sobbing at the end “I got the bullets” from Plato’s gun after he has been killed by the police does seem somewhat idiotic! If said before the police fired, it would surely make much more sense. But then I guess it was important that Plato dies at the end. And it’s always important to remember it is a film of its time – not 71 years later in 2026.
Many regard Rebel as Dean’s movie. Yet increasingly critics and audiences have come round to the view, as I do, that it is the emotionally charged Mineo as young Plato who is the real star. He is the actor who is the most believable, making his character’s loneliness, neediness and desperation so real, that face of a cherubic boy somehow infused with a knowing sensuality that exudes danger and vulnerability in equal measure. Plato seared Mineo into the minds of America’s youth.
Mineo was born to a family of poor Italian immigrants in New York. Being under age at the start of his career, his domineering mother took control of his finances. With absolutely no clue of the entertainment business, she skimmed off for herself 15% as his manager and a further 10% as his agent, as well as paying for all his expenses. For much of his time in Los Angeles she provided him with only $20 per week as a living allowance. This continued even when his movie fee was later to rise from $350 per week to $3,500 per week. He loved his family who initially sacrificed a lot for his career. Eventually he bought them a large mansion by the ocean at a cost of $350,000. He thought it would be his base forever. It did not take him long to realise his mother was spending all his money faster than he could make it. At the height of his fame he discovered he was broke and still owed US$250,000 to the IRS. He cut his financial ties to his mother and moved permanently to the West Coast. With his family unable to pay for the upkeep of the mansion, it was sold. Sal never saw a cent.
Photo of the late-teens Sal – photo Bettmann//Getty Images
After his second movie with Dean in a lesser role Giant, Sal had become a bankable star having been in several movies in between. But big roles did not come his way until Exodus in 1960 which earned him another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Playing Dov Landau, a powerfully bitter Auschwitz survivor in the movie, its director Otto Preminger had Dov confess the Nazis had “used him like a woman.” Even so, few seemed to realise that this meant homosexuality on the part of the Nazis. Hollywood in those days had to get a Production Code Seal of Approval to keep issues like homosexuality off screens. Preminger was one of the first to prove you could get away without that Seal for commercial success. It helped end studio self-censorship.
Sal’s love interest in that movie was a 15-year old English actor Jill Haworth. They got on so well that they kept seeing each other after shooting was complete. So great was Sal’s popularity by this time the two featured on the cover of LIFE magazine.
Cover from LIFE Magazine - Copyright LIFE magazine
Not only did their affair last several years, Mineo claimed he lost his virginity in his swimming pool when Haworth was only 16 (presumably he meant his virginity with a woman). She confirms this story, claiming she felt no shame because she really loved Sal. She was under contract to work in France and so Sal flew regularly to Paris. There she introduced him to the gay painter Harold Stevenson whose speciality was painting fully nude men. For whatever reason, Mineo agreed to model for him. This resulted in an enormous 40-foot long portrait of a fully naked Mineo titled “The New Adam”, conceived by Stevenson as a homage to his own lover, Lord Timothy Willoughby. Although his arm covers his eyes, Mineo never tried to hide his identity. It was acquired by New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2005 where it can now be viewed.
The New Adam painting - copyright Harold Stevenson
Part 2 with Mineo's adminssion of being gay will appear on Wednesday
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LGBTQ-History Month – (Part 1 of 2) Preface: Like a small number of other posters, I sometimes write long blog-type articles. Obviously readers can choose whether or not to bother reading them. I have decided the two parts of this and one more dealing with aspects of gay history this month will be my last such long ones. I hope at least some may find these interesting. February 12 sees several anniversaries. We'll skip over the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and me, and remember only it was the day 50 years in two days time when one of the cutest and most talented screen actors was murdered. Sal Mineo had just driven home from the rehearsal for a play. Walking towards his small one-bedroom West Hollywood apartment to spend the evening unusually alone (his actor boyfriend of six years, Courtney Burr, was due back from New York the following day), he was jumped on in a totally random robbery attempt and stabbed with one fatal knife wound to the heart. He died almost instantly. He was 37. Gay actors in Hollywood history were virtually all closeted and hard to find unless you were in the movie business. Mineo, though, eventually came out as gay and I find him a hauntingly fascinating, hugely talented, mischievous, mysterious and thus frequently exasperating character. A few readers will remember him, may even have seen him in one of his films, may know that he was gay, this at a time when we are told many actors were either gay or bisexual but totally afraid for this to become known. While Mineo might initially have been bisexual he did come out as gay just at the time when sexual boundaries were being extended and just before the gay world we know today really began. In so many respects he was ahead of his time. Not well known is that Sal Mineo had an early connection to Thailand. He had been a child star on Broadway playing a pageboy in The King & I. When the boy playing Crown Prince Chulalongkorn fell ill, Sal stepped into his shoes for the rest of the run. He loved performing with Yul Brynner who was to become almost a father figure to him for the next decade of his life. Scene from the original New York production of The King & I - photo Fred Fehl His big break as an actor came in films when he played Plato alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in the 1955 movie Rebel Without A Cause. Rebel is a movie about three very alienated teenagers, each misunderstood by their parents who simply do not even try to listen to them and each desperate for someone to care about them. As Dean says when the three are in the darkened castle near the end and they imagine how much better their lives could be, almost pretending to be a family, “Nobody talks to children.” Sal was just 16 at the time of filming. As a result of that movie he became one of the youngest actors ever nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It is now known that Dean was bisexual. It was always assumed that Mineo and Dean had an affair during the filming of the movie. Yet Mineo later acknowledged that at that time “I had no idea or understanding of affection between men.” It was only later that he became bisexual (and even later totally gay) but the Dean rumours persist to this day. Even so, very brief flings with men were to become a part of his life, even though he initially found them unsatisfying for a number of reasons. Several sources agree Rebel’s director Nicholas Ray, himself bisexual, had sex with his young star even before the start of filming, as it is known he had with Natalie Wood. A screen actress since the age of four, Wood had by then quite a sexual upbringing, one being in an affair with Frank Sinatra when he was 38 and she only 15 after she had been pimped by her Russian mother. That near kiss at the end of the clip does not appear in the movie which was filmed in colour. For years Mineo claimed that in a way he was seen as the movie world's first gay teenager. As he said in a 1972 interview, “You watch it now, you know he has the hots for James Dean. You watch it now, and everyone knows about Jimmy, so it’s like he had the hots for Natalie and me. Ergo, I had to be bumped off, out of the way.” It now seems certain Nicholas Ray intended this, as there are many discreet gay references in the movie if you just look for them. Jim offering Plato his jacket in the police station after hearing Plato feels cold even though they do not know each other. The photo of screen idol Alan Ladd in Plato’s locker. After the “chicken” run, Plato looks on Jim as clearly more than just a crush. When he then suggests Jim go home with him to chat, that there is no one else there and they can have breakfast together, it becomes even more obvious. Yet if there had indeed been any relationship between Dean and Mineo as actors it ended suddenly when Dean was tragically killed in a car crash the month before Rebel Without A Cause was released. Masculinity in movies up to the early 1950s meant essentially John Wayne-type characters. With Marlon Brando in The Wild One in 1953, a new type of masculine youth figure evolved, one that was to develop even further with the three leads in Rebel. Roles for teen actors were no longer thereafter to be relegated to nicely-dressed adjuncts of polite middle-and upper-class families. And rebels were no longer just from poor working class homes. Of the three teenagers, I find Wood the least effective. Although she really was 16 when the movie was filmed, to me she actually looks and acts – and is dressed – more like 26. Having recently seen the movie, I do not find it quite as iconic as its reputation. Some of Dean’s scenes are definitely overdone while the drama is not always convincing. After the dreadful death of her boyfriend in the game of “chicken”, Wood shows almost no emotion, before instantly transferring her romantic feelings to Dean. That certainly does not ring true. Indeed, none of the gang show any emotion either, despite the horror they have just witnessed. Dean’s sobbing at the end “I got the bullets” from Plato’s gun after he has been killed by the police does seem somewhat idiotic! If said before the police fired, it would surely make much more sense. But then I guess it was important that Plato dies at the end. And it’s always important to remember it is a film of its time – not 71 years later in 2026. Many regard Rebel as Dean’s movie. Yet increasingly critics and audiences have come round to the view, as I do, that it is the emotionally charged Mineo as young Plato who is the real star. He is the actor who is the most believable, making his character’s loneliness, neediness and desperation so real, that face of a cherubic boy somehow infused with a knowing sensuality that exudes danger and vulnerability in equal measure. Plato seared Mineo into the minds of America’s youth. Mineo was born to a family of poor Italian immigrants in New York. Being under age at the start of his career, his domineering mother took control of his finances. With absolutely no clue of the entertainment business, she skimmed off for herself 15% as his manager and a further 10% as his agent, as well as paying for all his expenses. For much of his time in Los Angeles she provided him with only $20 per week as a living allowance. This continued even when his movie fee was later to rise from $350 per week to $3,500 per week. He loved his family who initially sacrificed a lot for his career. Eventually he bought them a large mansion by the ocean at a cost of $350,000. He thought it would be his base forever. It did not take him long to realise his mother was spending all his money faster than he could make it. At the height of his fame he discovered he was broke and still owed US$250,000 to the IRS. He cut his financial ties to his mother and moved permanently to the West Coast. With his family unable to pay for the upkeep of the mansion, it was sold. Sal never saw a cent. Photo of the late-teens Sal – photo Bettmann//Getty Images After his second movie with Dean in a lesser role Giant, Sal had become a bankable star having been in several movies in between. But big roles did not come his way until Exodus in 1960 which earned him another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Playing Dov Landau, a powerfully bitter Auschwitz survivor in the movie, its director Otto Preminger had Dov confess the Nazis had “used him like a woman.” Even so, few seemed to realise that this meant homosexuality on the part of the Nazis. Hollywood in those days had to get a Production Code Seal of Approval to keep issues like homosexuality off screens. Preminger was one of the first to prove you could get away without that Seal for commercial success. It helped end studio self-censorship. Sal’s love interest in that movie was a 15-year old English actor Jill Haworth. They got on so well that they kept seeing each other after shooting was complete. So great was Sal’s popularity by this time the two featured on the cover of LIFE magazine. Cover from LIFE Magazine - Copyright LIFE magazine Not only did their affair last several years, Mineo claimed he lost his virginity in his swimming pool when Haworth was only 16 (presumably he meant his virginity with a woman). She confirms this story, claiming she felt no shame because she really loved Sal. She was under contract to work in France and so Sal flew regularly to Paris. There she introduced him to the gay painter Harold Stevenson whose speciality was painting fully nude men. For whatever reason, Mineo agreed to model for him. This resulted in an enormous 40-foot long portrait of a fully naked Mineo titled “The New Adam”, conceived by Stevenson as a homage to his own lover, Lord Timothy Willoughby. Although his arm covers his eyes, Mineo never tried to hide his identity. It was acquired by New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2005 where it can now be viewed. The New Adam painting - copyright Harold Stevenson Part 2 with Mineo's adminssion of being gay will appear on Wednesday
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