Sal Mineo by Michael Gregg Michaud

Sal Mineo rose to stardom with his role in Rebel Without a Cause, a performance etched into millions of hearts as a prototype juvenile delinquent.

Born in the Bronx, he was cast in hit Broadway plays at age eleven (1952 Tony award winners The Rose Tattoo and The King and I). Rebel was his second film role, with a seventeen-year-old Natalie Wood and heartthrob James Dean, who had just completed East of Eden. Sal was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

He went on to film Giant with Dean, and Somebody Up There Likes Me opposite Dean, who tragically died while filming.

MineoMania struck with fan clubs and never-ending mail. Like many other young actors (Ricky Nelson, Fabian), he started a recording career, earning gold records. He was the family business, yet lived on a $20-a-week allowance. Where was all the money going? Overspending, unwieldy debts, and IRS back taxes—the nest egg saved for when he turned 21 was spent before he got it.

Exodus (with Paul Newman) won him a Golden Globe, and Tonka, The Longest Day, The Gene Krupa Story, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and Krakatoa - East of Java (which it is not) followed. Meeting actress Jill Haworth on Exodus led to a serious relationship, but she was surprised by what everyone else already knew when she found him in bed with singer Bobby Sherman. A well-known homosexual, Sal's taste in projects changed, starring in the sexually provocative film Who Killed Teddy Bear? He directed and starred in the lurid jail rape play Fortune and Men's Eyes with Don Johnson and chose salacious roles with themes of child abuse, hustlers, and drag queens. A Toronto production of Sugar and Spice about a Manson-style murder had patrons fleeing the aisles.

With debt like quicksand, he managed to scrape by with dinner theatre, TV game shows, and drama cameos, and an unrecognizable role in Escape to the Planet of the Apes. As director and star in the unlikely play PS Your Cat is Dead, he was back with a stage hit in 1975.

As they moved the play to San Francisco in February 1976, Sal Mineo was stabbed to death by a robber. He was 37.

A detailed afterword outlines the daunting process of finding the anonymous assailant, his admissions, and resulting sentence of 51 years to life.

Sal Mineo will remain known to millions, frozen in time as a 16 year-old Rebel.

A polished performer regardless of the work, he turned in notable performances. The strain of turning from teen idol to adult roles was great, compounded by the times which called for edgy drama with dark angles. In the last five years of his life, his friend and lover Courtney Burr III supported and encouraged him, and both Courtney and Jill contributed greatly to this in-depth profile of a man who was often his own worst enemy. This biography is comprehensive and becomes more detailed as the murder case proceeds.

With the majority of his success well before he was 21, to pushing the envelope as an actor, this is fascinating reading. For Hollywood fans, recommended.

2010 / Hardcover / 432 pages