Sal mineo gay

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. [7]. 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.

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.

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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. “Sal was not a degenerate. Sal was a gentleman, greatly misunderstood, desired, used. When he was murdered—underground and in the dark—rumors and speculation arose about his dark life and sordid associates.

This is how we pervert homosexuality; this is how we allow ourselves to believe that queers invite their destinies, their deaths. I had meant to write a bit about this a while back, but I got bogged down with work and then a car accident and never quite got to it. While I was doing a literature review, I came across a truly bizarre anecdote that needed much more investigation. According to the story, Sal attempted fruitlessly to contact his fallen friend at a seance.

He thereafter wrecked his car in an accident, but fate intervened to spare Sal's life. Now, Boze Hadleigh is a difficult figure to take at face value since many of the stories he reported and the interviews he conducted have no independent confirmation, or are impossible. For example, in his many books he quoted multiple celebrities commenting on events that occurred after they died. However, despite the absence of citation, credit, or acknowledgement, Hadleigh was not the source for the claim, so we can set him aside.

As the story goes, young Mineo left a seance in which he had attempted in vain to contact his fallen friend, only to wreck his own car. Supposedly, he was gay from that moment on. One can take or leave that bizarre coming-out story, but it seemed perfectly obvious to gay audiences almost three decades ago that Mineo and Dean only had eyes for each other.

Since Greif did not originate the stories he provided in his anthology of queer anecdotes, I presume there must have been some earlier account unknown to me, probably in a gay magazine, that served as his source. Dick Kleiner filed a report for his Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicated Hollywood column in November claiming that at some unspecified time in the past, Sal Mineo held a party where he raised the spirit of James Dean via Ouija board.

Mineo and the others went outside. He said he had just begun driving away when it happened. And he pointed to the windshield. Dee eventually got a new windshield, because he never could get those initials off. Sal Mineo had long claimed to be interested in the occult, and appeared to revel in equal measure in pulling the legs of the gullible. She came to me through my Ouija board one night.

However, she sounds pretty. Though the ghost girl appears to be a fairly obvious joke and a deflection from the marriage issue, Graham made it her headline scoop. Similarly, the magically appearing etched letters are an old spiritualist trick. Regardless of whether any Jaguars crashed into trees, the newspapers story is the obvious origin point for the later, more homophobic version. All of that said, the supernaturalists who invent stories missed out on a rather chilling premonition.

Oh well. On February 12, , Lionel Ray Williams stabbed him in the heart, and he died after stumbling a few steps and collapsing. Please leave James Dean and Sal Mineo alone. Leave their memories alone.

Let them rest in peace. There are so many themes about which you can write Who Jimmy loved or did not love was his concern and noone else's. Paula, Portugal. It was an appalling self-revelation of the author.