Sal Mineo 1939to –1976
American actor and teen heartthrob, best known for portraying Plato in Rebel Without a Cause. Growing up in the Bronx, Mineo began performing at a young age. At 12, he made his debut in a Tennessee Williams play, and also played the young prince in the stage musical of The King and I, alongside Yul Brynner who became an early mentor. He found various roles on the stage, on television, and in films, but his career-defining moment came in 1955 when he was cast in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause. His character, Plato, was a young, sensitive outcast infatuated with James Dean, and is often considered film’s first gay teenager. His performance earned him his first Oscar nomination, but also led to a career of being typecast. He was frequently offered the role of the tough street delinquent, earning himself the nickname the “Switchblade Kid.” An olive complexion in Hollywood also meant that he was given “ethnic” roles, including a Native American boy in Tonka, a Mexican boy in Giant, and a young Jewish man in Exodus, which earned him his second Oscar nomination. Mineo himself was Italian and proud of his heritage, refusing to change his last name like so many other actors of the time did. He was also openly bisexual, although he came into his sexuality well after Rebel Without a Cause was filmed. As Mineo grew older and no longer fit the teen heartthrob mold, he film opportunities began to dry up, not helped by rumors of his sexuality. In the late 60s, Mineo turned his attention back to the stage, directing and performing in plays with explicitly queer content, unafraid to make those rumors explicit. In 1976, he began playing a bisexual burglar in the comedy P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, and with the positive publicity it garnered, it seemed that his career was back on the upswing. Tragically, one night as he was walking home from rehearsal, he was stabbed in front of his apartment building and killed. The police’s response was at first overtly homophobic. They assumed that the culprit was Mineo’s six-year boyfriend at the time, or an ex-lover, or a sex worker, or a drug dealer, even though there was no indication that Mineo had any enemies, paid for sex, or did hard drugs. Three years later, pizza deliveryman Lionel Ray Williams was arrested and convicted of the crime, based on little evidence considering that witnesses had seen a white man fleeing the scene and Williams was black. The murder was such a scandal that, for some time, it overshadowed Mineo’s many accomplishments. But today, it is Mineo’s work, and especially his iconic portrayal of Plato, that has endured in the public consciousness.