Sal mineo gay
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His tormentors waited for screams or cries, but Sal told me he curled up and thought of a nap. His character, Plato, was a young, sensitive outcast infatuated with James Dean, and is often considered film’s first gay teenager.
The low-level criminal had never heard of the Hollywood heartthrob, and prosecutors alleged it was a robbery gone awry. It was rumored that he’d slept with some of the most powerful men — and adulterous women — in Hollywood. When he was murdered—underground and in the dark—rumors and speculation arose about his dark life and sordid associates.
He was always the sweet boy, and I wanted him to see himself as I did.
“Sal was not a degenerate. But today, it is Mineo’s work, and especially his iconic portrayal of Plato, that has endured in the public consciousness.
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He cared deeply about so many things: acting, art, photography, life, spirituality.Because so many had extracted sex from him either in the form of abuse or desire, sexual favors and flirtation was a currency he understood and offered most freely. Some believe that got him killed.
Rotting away in California’s notorious San Quentin prison, Williams knew nothing of RFK, Sirhan, or alleged CIA mind-control programs.
Crane was murdered two years after Mineo, and his killers were never caught. “He tried to buy everyone a TV.”
One day, a mysterious man came to visit Williams in the clink.
The man said his name was Herald Blum, and that he was “a senator of some sort.” He made several trips to San Quentin to inform Williams he not only believed he was innocent — but a patsy.
He also wrote paranoid letters to Williams in prison, saying that he was being followed by the FBI and claimed to have known Mineo.
The year before his death, Mineo was shopping around a new film, “Sirhan Sirhan,” with himself playing the title character, a fictionalized version of the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. Growing up in the Bronx, Mineo began performing at a young age. We bonded because he had a full and dark humor at that young age.
He had the eyes of a Caravaggio giraffe—long lashes and deep wells of feeling. His flagrant sexuality was a reason he struggled to get work. The police’s response was at first overtly homophobic. In 1976, he began playing a bisexual burglar in the comedy P.S. “I’ve learned a lot of things about the system when I was in [prison] and the system is not designed for us,
A new documentary about Williams’ case, “Unseen Innocence,” is currently playing at the Angelika Theatre in the East Village.
The film, and Williams’ advocates, allege that it all came down to a crooked police force desperate to close a high-profile crime, and that Ray Ray was a victim of corruption.
He did get acquainted with another notorious figure from that era — hippie death cult leader Charles Manson, whom he’d listen to sing through the cell walls.
“He’d get a whole bag of mail everyday. This is how we pervert homosexuality; this is how we allow ourselves to believe that queers invite their destinies, their deaths.
If the film can influence the courts to reopen the case or force out new facts and answer questions, then it will serve its purpose,” Mineo said at the time.
Mineo was told to shut up about Sirhan, but he refused to. He was right on the cusp of manhood [Mineo was twelve, in 1951, when he appeared in Williams’ play], and he was beautiful and sweet, and already a victim.
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. I did not partake.