Was sal mineo gay

But for gay audiences—both at the time and now—it’s one of many unspoken but crystal-clear indications that Plato is drawn to Jim as more than just a father figure. Mineo, who was 16 years old. By the early s, Mineo was becoming too old to play the type of role that had made him famous, and rumors of his homosexuality led to his being considered inappropriate for leading roles. For example, he auditioned for David Lean 's film Lawrence of Arabia () but was not hired.

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At the time of his murder, Mineo, who became one of the first influential actors in Hollywood to openly acknowledge his homosexuality, had been involved with Burr for six years. Sal Mineo & Bobby Sherman: Sal Mineo’s sexuality was no secret in private circles, and while details of his romances remain murky, Bobby Sherman was one name often linked to him in fan gossip.

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. Although nearly 65 years old, Nicholas Ray's classic Rebel Without a Cause has provided, for better or for worse, what many Americans still consider to be the central Jungian archetype of the Typical American Teenager.

Jim Stark, as played by James Dean, is depicted as an adolescent Christ — the Ur-example of young Boomer angst — bearing on his shoulders the pains and frustrations of all white American high school boys, replete with all the lusts, loves, rages, and dumb mistakes his demographic is meant to commonly commit and experience. That Dean himself often appeared very Jim Stark-like in interviews — flip yet guarded, intelligent yet shy — only helped to cement Rebel 's eventual reputation as the one true exemplar of white male teenage life in the American s.

Their hand-wringing parents, meanwhile, were treated to the secret, vicarious thrill of witnessing what sins the children were getting up to when they weren't looking. Rebel 's widespread cultural influence, however, has claimed an unlikely victim: Sal Mineo. Plato is often victimized and abused, and the protection of Jim provides Plato with not only comfort, but the promise of a new father figure and, as modern audiences can clearly see, a potential lover.

Plato was a very cagey character. In the safety of the shadows, Plato begins suggesting a new domestic setup for the three of them: Jim and Judy are now America's new mom and dad, with Plato as, yes, their son, but more so their proud third wheel. It doesn't take much imagination to see that Plato is suggesting a sex-fluid polyamorous domestic scenario.

Suggesting such a non-traditional sexual scenario wasn't necessarily out-of-the-realm in ; Alfred Kinsey had published his famous volumes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in and respectively, so the topic had been ostensibly broached. But Plato does not get his wish; he dies at the hands of the aforementioned interlopers. Plato, so commonly read as gay, was immediately — and many would say unfortunately — codified as the archetypal image of closeted gay angst.

Mineo, in giving such a sympathetic and nuanced performance, was swept up in that image: But Mineo and Plato became something that it would take cinema decades to shake loose: a gay martyr.

It doesn't take too close a look at cinema's history to reveal example after example of gay and bisexual characters who are undone by their secret love, and who are just as often sacrificed I could provide a lengthy list of examples, but I would instead point readers to the still-relevant documentary The Celluloid Closet , which traces the history of gay stereotypes far better than I ever could.

The overall lesson was clear to queer audiences: homosexuality and bisexuality are just too corrupt for this world, cinema would often tell us, and the gay and bi characters are guilty, guilty, guilty. Sal Mineo was not the first to play such a part, but he did — through Rebel 's success and cultural foothold — become what might be cinema's prime queer martyr, as it were.

That Mineo was himself a closeted bisexual who wouldn't openly talk about his sexuality until the s didn't help this frustratingly persistent image. That Mineo was tragically murdered in at the age of 37 cemented the parallels even further. Because of the strength of Mineo's performance as Plato, and because of the tragedy of his death, the line between character and actor has become speciously blurred by the ensuing decades.

Mineo, in stark contrast to Plato, was not the antsy, tragic martyr as depicted in Rebel. In that interview which can be read online here , Mineo comes across as approachable, unguarded, and completely comfortable. He's even refreshingly crass and definitely funny. He was very far from the twitchy, sad figure of typical gay angst he had come to be yoked with.

Although he had relationships with men and women — and he openly described himself as bisexual — popular perception was that he only was interested in men. This is, of course, a frustration shared by many bisexual people: they're seen as being only as gay or as straight as the person their dating or sleeping with that day. When he was engaged to Jill Haworth, rumors were flying that she was only his beard to cover for the fact that he was having an affair with Bobby Sherman.

I don't know what sort of relationship arrangement Mineo had with Haworth if he was out to her or if their relationship was an open one , but they did continue to date on and off for years and remained close up until his death. There is even a story of how Mineo once punched Aaron Spelling in the face for dating the much younger Haworth. Many have said that Mineo's known sexuality was responsible for his inability to find work after the s.

He auditioned for many high-profile feature films but was often turned down. Mineo, in the Hadleigh interview, blamed not his sexuality, but his Italian teen idol good looks for his career decline. Mineo had a vulnerable, boyish face, even into his 30s.