TinselTales: Salacious Sal and the Teen Idols

When it comes to Hollywood actor Sal Mineo, who ran the gamut from pre-teen hood rat to child actor on Broadway to twice-Oscar-nominated movie star to career-spiraling, avant-garde stage director, much has been written. For the most part today, I'm drawing information from a heavily-researched 2010 biography by Michael Gregg Michaud.  Other sources are far more startling and lascivious, but also more suspect (I'm looking at you, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince.) The more legitimate biography paints Mineo as a young man who portrayed some sexually offbeat characters before belatedly diving headlong into a homosexually-leaning lifestyle himself. Other reports have him getting it on with the director and many in the cast of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) when he was 16 and with just about anyone else after that! Not sure I can fully buy into that avenue, having looked into his life rather thoroughly. But even the "verified" info is pretty saucy at times, as we'll soon see! 

Born January 10th, 1939 in The Bronx borough of New York City to Sicilian parents, Mineo's early years were spent running the streets with some local toughs where he was eventually caught and given a stern warning from a judge -- either get it together by enrolling in some extracurricular classes or go to juvenile hall! He opted, with his mother's guidance, to go to acting school, where he immediately excelled. 

Having first taken on a role in Broadway's The Rose Tattoo at age 12, he proceeded to understudy the role of the prince in Yul Brynner's The King and I.

Eventually, he moved into the role during the prior actor's vacation and he found himself treading the boards with the highly-imposing Brynner. Brynner instructed him on how to prepare his "Siamese" makeup and generally mentored him during their time on Broadway.

Mineo occasionally stayed at Brynner's home where he was taught to water-ski and the two developed a close bond that didn't end when their 1950s projects did. Omnibus was just one of several TV programs on which young Mineo appeared.

His debut on the big screen came with a role in Six Bridges to Cross (1954), which starred Tony Curtis. This was followed by a part in Charlton Heston's The Private War of Major Benson the same year. 

The role and movie that ensured immortality on some level was Rebel Without a Cause (1955) opposite James Dean. Some dubious accounts claim that Mineo not only fiddled around with the director Nicholas Ray but that he also, in order to prove that he and Dean had chemistry, got it on in front of the director for an hour during a private audition...! (It must be said that the same sort of shenanigans exist regarding Natalie Wood and to varying degrees Dennis Hopper and Nick Adams.)  

What's undeniable is that a) the character was intended by Ray to have a fixation on Dean's young rebel and that a subliminal homosexual angle was hinted at (including the pinup of screen star Alan Ladd in Mineo's locker) and b) Mineo - in real life - became utterly entranced by Dean. Whether anything ever became of it, Mineo was in awe, became fixated and, by his own admission, had his days on the set either made or ruined solely by the tone of Dean's greeting (or non-greeting!) each day. 

An intimacy among the three leads made it on screen, but not nearly to the extent that occurred during filmed tests when Dean and Mineo connected more significantly. Newcomer Mineo was given an Oscar nomination for his challenging, rather groundbreaking role, but it went to Jack Lemmon for Mister Roberts.

Now a hot property, Mineo was utilized in the movie Giant (1956), (which costarred James Dean) in a small, but appealing, role. Crime in the Streets and Somebody Up There Likes Me, both 1956 followed and both depicted him as a wayward youth. In the latter film, Paul Newman starred in a part which had been earmarked for the late Dean. 

As these films were being released, he was part of a now-infamous photo shoot and profile for an article in "Screen Stars" magazine. The still 17 year-old Mineo was followed around a gym and ultimately photographed naked, soaping up, in the shower. This article crops the photo a little higher than the original. 

The eye-popping pic made the rounds and alternately shocked his young fans as well as arousing the interest of others. 

Mineo, who'd been musically minded since his childhood became a proficient drummer, first for Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) and especially for The Gene Krupa Story (1959.) 

Like many a fellow teen star, he dabbled in recording, too. He enjoyed brief, but reasonable, success in 1957 with two Top 40 hits including "Start Movin'," which made it to #9 and was a gold record. But it wasn't an avenue he was terribly comfortable in. 

1960 brought him a key role in a big film and also was when a key relationship in his life began. In Exodus, which starred Paul Newman, he played a young Jewish boy who has been tortured and sexually molested by Nazis. His love interest in the film was young Jill Haworth, six years his junior and under personal contract to director Otto Preminger. 

Mineo and Haworth more than hit it off and swiftly became a real life couple, though much of their togetherness was kept under wraps because Preminger strongly disapproved of the match and did anything he could think of to discourage them. Haworth lost her virginity to Mineo when she was 15 and he was 21.

He won a Golden Globe for his role in Exodus, but couldn't take home the Oscar, which went to Peter Ustinov for Spartacus. It was a bitter loss for him as he felt it was his to win. Preminger continued to dissuade Haworth from pursuing any relationship with Mineo, and succeeded for a time, but eventually they became a couple. 

Throughout his career, Mineo seemed to suffer from typecasting. He was a punk, then a victim, then an ethnic underdog. Allegedly, he'd been discounted as viable for Omar Sharif's role in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he'd just convincingly portrayed a Jew. He also had trouble capitalizing on his successes when they came. After 1960's Exodus, he wasn't on the big screen again until a cameo with Richard Beymer in The Longest Day (1962) and then Escape from Zahrain (1962), wherein his old mentor Yul Brynner came to the rescue. According to Haworth, both Preminger and Brynner told her that Mineo was into men. The details of how they arrived at these conclusions have been speculated about in various books. 

While in Paris in 1962, Mineo posed for artist Harold Stevenson in a startling, large-scale work called "The New Adam." When the piece later made its way to the US, Mineo attended a showing of the multi-piece display. 

As the early-1960s continued, Haworth and Mineo were a couple living together on the Santa Monica beach. They led a frolicsome life together and Mineo enjoyed directing little short films with his home camera. But things were about to get complicated. 

By this time, Mineo had become very close friends with young actor Michael Anderson Jr of The Sundowners (1960) and In Search of The Castaways (1962) and who would eventually star in The Monroes. (He and Mineo also appeared in the TV-movie In Search of America together in 1971.) While Anderson was reportedly straight, he was close to a live-in at the house and bore witness to some of the events which were about to rock the Sal & Jill romance to its core. 

Haworth had taken notice of a 19 year-old beach boy who could frequently be found near her house. One day, suggesting he might make a nice subject for one of Sal's mini home movies, she was startled to find that he already knew where it was that she and Sal lived. 

Mineo had, in fact, been paying for head shots, drums, music lessons and who knows what all in order to aid the fledgling music career of his new friend. He then began helping said friend - young Bobby Sherman - land local gigs, ultimately resulting in his becoming a house vocalist on the teen idol music show Shindig! One day, Haworth came home unexpectedly and found Sherman and Mineo in the midst of sexual intercourse... and Mineo looked directly at her without ceasing. Somehow, Haworth eventually got past this and remained a friend, but their romantic relationship was over. 

The admittedly pretty Sherman went on to become a pop singing sensation, though he almost immediately distanced himself on every level from his benefactor once his foothold in the biz had taken. 

He was eventually cast in the lumber camp series Here Come the Brides as one of three logging brothers. (In a bizarre twist, Sherman married in 1971 to a woman who, after their divorce, married his Brides costar David Soul! This made former costar Soul stepfather to Sherman's two kids with said ex-wife.) 

After a period of searing fame with the teen set, Sherman segued out of the entertainment industry for the most part and became a paramedic and deputy sheriff. 

Whatever may have gone on between Sherman and Mineo, an ongoing romantic relationship was not something that Sherman was inclined to give his mentor. The two severed ties, legally, for $1. It should be mentioned that years later, when Mineo was in serious financial difficulty, Sherman was pressed to reimburse money spent on his early career and he did provide $3,000. Sherman died in June of 2025 of kidney cancer at age 81.

Always attempting to stretch his acting abilities while simultaneously trying to escape forms of typecasting, he embarked on one of his more audacious movies in 1965. Who Killed Teddy Bear? had him portraying a nightclub waiter obsessed with the club's female disc jockey (Juliet Prowse.) His increasingly stalker-like behavior is complicated by the fact that his boss, Elaine Stritch, wouldn't mind a piece of Prowse either...! 

In gauzy, erotic scenes, Mineo is shown in tighty-whity briefs, rubbing all over his chest, belly and thighs. 

His body, in exquisite condition, is adored by the camera in a hilariously suggestive workout sequence.

Ultimately, he's seen swimming (and not swimming) in some exceedingly snug briefs. Not shy about his physique (and with no reason to be), this was another instance of pushing the envelope with audiences. But more was to come. 

Those of us in a certain age group either grew up watching Lassie, with the canine's little blond owner Jon Provost, when it aired or through reruns in syndication of the enduring show. 

There was an eleven-year age gap between these two, who once were popular enough at the same time to grace the same magazine cover. By 1967, when they met, Provost was set to play in a film Mineo was developing, but the project never came to fruition. A friendship between them did stick, however. For a while. 

Mineo was dating a girl, Susan, who he had informed of his bisexuality. He reportedly used her at times as "bait" for threesomes or as a sexual partner he could watch copulate with various guys he had his sites set on. Wide-eyed Provost became one of these gents and eventually began taking part in activity with Susan while Mineo watched. But one time, when Mineo decided that this was the day that the two of them would play around, it all ended abruptly, with the resolutely straight Provost exiting stage right. He is now 75, married since 1999 to his second wife.

Mineo, who never managed either his funds or his career very well (and always provided funds to his family), struggled to find quality work. He did some decent things on TV, but could not seem to see any of his cinematic plans through to fruition. He found a degree of solace in stage work and that eventually led to his interest in a controversial play about life in prison called Fortune and Men's Eyes. 

Mineo determined that he was going to direct as well as star in the production. In order to ramp things up, way up, he had a previously off-stage prison rape staged so that the audience would see a more vivid representation of it. 

The play had been done in New York already, but for the Los Angeles production a new "rape victim" would appear. Initially brought on as an understudy, fresh meat Don Johnson landed the costarring role when the prior actor broke an ankle. 

Johnson, close to the dawn of his acting career, was instructed to drop 10 lbs before opening. And as he was coming from The Big Apple to the west coast, he moved in with Mineo. 

Every night on stage in the "prison showers," Johnson had his underwear yanked down and was theatrically violated by Mineo.

Needless to say, especially since they were cohabiting, the rumor mill went wild. 

For his part, Johnson said he didn't care in the least what anyone thought or said about their "did they or didn't they" off-screen relationship. It was all good publicity for the show. I think Johnson's reputation as a relentless skirt-chaser, especially at this point in his life, is at odds with any claims that he and Mineo were real life lovers. But you can bet that Mineo found him attractive nonetheless. Johnson moved on to a string of notable girlfriends (not the least of which was a young Melanie Griffith) while Mineo ultimately began the one really serious male relationship of his life. 

Stage actor Courtney Burr became part of the cast of "Fortune" and soon fell under Mineo's spell, breaking off an engagement to a female and proceeding on a six-year ride with his new love. (The top photo is from a later stage collaboration of theirs, The Tender Trap.) It was Burr who relayed our next and final teen idol encounter. 

Great Scott! Not Dennis the Menace?!

After the cancellation of Menace, series star Jay North worked on several things including the kid-friendly movie Maya (1966) and a television series based on that the year after. By 1971, he'd begun working mostly as a voice-actor (notably as a now teenage Bamm Bamm on The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show.) 

Eager to transition out of teen roles, North had auditioned to play Smitty (the rape victim) in Mineo's Fortune and Men's Eyes, but was not chosen. According to Mineo's partner Burr (an open relationship to say the least, though deemed that way mostly by Mineo), North came to their home one day and proceeded into a bedroom with Mineo. Burr's partner invited him to join them, but Burr was put off by the exceedingly slim and youthful looking North, who revealed a little pair of yellow briefs under his clothing. 

Almost directly following this, North went to Chicago for stage roles in Norman, Is That You? and Butterflies Are Free. His final movie came in 1974 when he starred alongside Angel Tompkins in The Teacher. Here, the 24 year-old strawberry blond still displayed a boyish physique (and a nanosecond flash of tighty-whities) as a high school student who falls for a pretty young teacher. 

North, who'd gone through two very brief marriages beforehand, eventually wed a third time in 1993 and began life anew as a corrections officer, working with troubled youth in the Florida justice system. It was belatedly revealed that he'd undergone emotional and physical abuse by his aunt/guardian during production of Dennis the Menace and that it had left considerable mental scars on him along with a period of distaste for the series. He passed away in April of 2025 at age 73, following a colorectal cancer battle.

At the time of his sudden, grisly murder on February 12th, 1976, Mineo was only 37. He'd been performing the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead in San Francisco and was in rehearsals for a Los Angeles production of it, costarring Keir Dullea. Returning home at 10:00pm, he was stabbed by an assailant with the blade reaching his heart, leading to deadly hemorrhaging. Three years later, after a series of convoluted events, a man was arrested, tried and convicted of the murder, apparently without ever having realized initialy that his victim was even famous. 

Though plenty of Sal Mineo's on-screen and on-stage projects brought joy to many, his life overall is tinged with a degree of sadness. He sought to please old-world parents, had difficulty facing some of his personal desires for a long period of time, was generous to a fault, which attracted a long list of hangers on, and was unable to properly sustain what had begun as a promising and prestigious career. And though he often was paid handsomely for his work, he ran through it as fast as it came in. 

While fellow performers such as Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter took pleasure in disappearing under such makeup, Mineo was humiliated (as well as dangerously claustrophobic) when he had it applied to his face for his final film Escape from the Planet of the Apes in 1971. 

Perhaps due to the fact that his own childhood was interrupted by work, he had a seemingly lifelong affinity for youthful men in brief underwear. He was described as having a "type" which was blonde, slim and 16-20. (One of his longtime friends and a pallbearer at his funeral claimed to have met and made love with Sal when he was but 14!) In any case, this sort of look figured into many of his proposed movie projects and, of course, was present in Fortune as well. 

One of Mineo's close friends during the '70s was teen idol David Cassidy (seen here with Sherman when he was a guest on The Partridge Family!) Like Sherman, Cassidy had been gifted a drum set from Mineo when he was 14 in 1964 after he had been in awe that "Gene Krupa" was visiting his house. David's stepfather Elliot Silverstein had invited Mineo for dinner after directing him in an episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre. Cassidy stayed pals with Mineo and even paid for the casket for his funeral, later describing Mineo as a man "without guile."

I mentioned early on that there are countless stories circulating about Mineo's love life. Sources have him in bed with Yul Brynner, Paul Newman, Nick Adams, gangster Mickey Cohen, Peter Lawford and many others. There is also a very wild rumor making its way around that Mineo was targeted with a paid assassin by an alcoholic, closeted-bi actor who was upset when their abusive love affair came apart. And who is the actor in question? The alleged spurned lover who hired a killer to take Mineo out is none other than David's father Jack Cassidy! Furthermore, the rumor suggests that an age-old method of secret, Sicilian-style revenge resulted in the stabber being done in and Cassidy being killed himself 10 months to the day later in an "accident!"  (Cassidy perished in a house fire December 12th, 1976.) Yowza....! I am not lending credence to this, but it was mind-blowing to ponder. Both Cassidy's son and ex-wife Shirley Jones later attested to Jack's bisexuality (not to mention questionable behavior near the end thanks to heavy substance abuse.) And the man who spent time in prison for Mineo's murder has now written a book and made a documentary pleading his innocence. Tinseltown, then and now, never fails to be a source of unbelievable shenanigans with entitled and often-bored celebrities engaging in anything imaginable. So who can say...? And with that, we're finally at...

The End!