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Famous Like Me > Actor > M > Sal Mineo

Profile of Sal Mineo on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Sal Mineo  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 10th January 1939
   
Place of Birth: The Bronx, New York, USA
   
Profession: Actor
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Sal Mineo

Salvatore Mineo, Jr. (January 10, 1939 - February 12, 1976) was an American actor and theater director, famous 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.

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 (1955) in which he gave an impressive performance as 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." Mineo was later reunited with Dean in Giant, though only in a few scenes.

Many of his subsequent roles were variations of his role in Rebel Without a Cause and he often played juvenile delinquents. By the late 1950s he was a major celebrity, sometimes referred to as the "Switchblade Kid".

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.

Meanwhile Mineo made an effort to break his typecasting. His acting ability and somewhat exotic good looks earned him roles as a Native American boy in Tonka and as a Jewish emigrant in Otto Preminger's Exodus for which he received another Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor (and reportedly was bitterly disappointed when he didn't win).

By the early 1960s he was getting too old to play the types that had made him famous and for a variety of reasons wasn't considered appropriate for leading roles. He auditioned for David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia but wasn't 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? (1964) didn't seem to help. Although his performance was praised by critics, he found himself typecast anew, now as a deranged criminal. He returned to the stage to produce the gay-themed Fortune and Men's Eyes, 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 criticised as excessive and prurient. A string of failed projects and flops followed.

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 12 February 1976 Mineo was stabbed to death in the alley behind a West Hollywood apartment building. He was 37.

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 frequently boasted of the crime, which appears to have been a botched mugging. Williams was paroled in 1990 after serving 12 years but was jailed numerous times thereafter for parole violations.

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

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."

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Sal Mineo