ISSUE No. 1: Sal Mineo

Hollywood’s ‘First Gay Teenager,’ Sal Mineo, was born on this day in 1939. Ahead of his time and taken way too soon. Sal was the youngest person nominated for an Academy Award for 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause” where Sal played Plato, a lonely gay teenager in 1950’s America. He was nominated once again a few years later for his role in “Exodus” - the epic film on the founding of the modern State of Israel. By the early 1960s, Sal was becoming too old to play the type of role that had made him famous, and his rumored homosexuality led to his being considered inappropriate for leading roles. Sal's last role in a motion picture was a small part in the film Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971); he played the chimpanzee, Dr. Milo. In a 1972 interview, Sal openly discussed his bisexuality. At the time of his murder, he was in a six-year relationship with male actor Courtney Burr III. On the night of February 12, 1976, the actor returned home following a rehearsal for the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. After parking his car in the carport below his West Hollywood apartment, the 37-year-old was stabbed once in the heart by a mugger who quickly fled the scene. Police pursued multiple leads but assumed the crime to be the result of some sort of “homosexual motivation.” In March of 1979, Lionel Ray Williams was sentenced to 57 years in prison for both killing Mineo and committing ten robberies in the same area. Lionel was paroled in the 1990s. CLICK HERE for the issue that started it all DEAD IN HOLLYWOOD: SAL MINEO (Issue no. 1).