Book Blog Begins

  

I begin this blog with a disclosure – the opinions here are mine and mine alone, along with my prejudices, my preferences, my politics, my style, my education, knowledge and lack thereof, all of which are subject to change without warning.  I also bring a lifetime of loving to read which is likely to be inherent in my DNA and growing up surrounded by the printed word. 

As a child (in the 1960’s and 1970’s) my favorites included Ferdinand the Bull & The Story of Ping:

As well as all Robert McCloskey’s Books, but most especially his award winning classic Blueberries for Sal:

I could name many more, but one remains especially close to my heart and that was Prince Bertam the Bad by Arnold Lobel.  Here it is in its Japanese edition - still looking approriately wicked.  Looking back this may have been where I first became attracted to bad boys:

In grammar school, I discovered Beverly Cleary’s Ramona series and I doggedly read every one.  I suppose what I liked was to read about a child who was like myself, having an adventure of their own making.  

By the time I got to Junior H.S. I became interested in biographies and memoirs.  The first biography I remember taking off my Dad’s bookshelf was His Eye is on the Sparrow by Ethel Waters.  At the time I hadn’t the slightest clue who Miss Waters was, but her story was compelling, and it wet my appetite for the genre.  I immersed myself in the lives of Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman and Miss Jane Pittman.  I also loved showbiz memoirs.  I still do.  And that is why I am thrilled to tell you about a great new read Sal Mineo:  A Biography by Michael Gregg Michaud. 

Michael Michaud has devoted ten years to this labor of love, and it shows.  This is the definitive biography of Sal Mineo, an actor we all recognize immediately, but never knew.  Michaud has exhaustively researched Sal Mineo’s life cradle to post-mortem, objectively, and without leaving a stone unturned.  To say Michaud’s research is extensive is an understatement.  Most important in this process, were his access to Jill Haworth, Sal’s former fiancée, and Courtney Burr, III, his long-time companion.  These were the two people who Sal lived with and loved the most in the world.  Haworth and Burr also granted Michaud permission to reprint photos of Sal from their never-before-seen private collections, a great bonus, especially in the case of Haworth who unexpectedly passed away last month.    

This biography gives us the essence of Sal Mineo, the man behind the persona.  Most of us only recall Mineo as the angel faced, Plato, in “Rebel Without a Cause” opposite James Dean & Natalie Wood.  It was 16 year-old Mineo alone who received an Academy Award nomination for this film.  Soon after Mineo became known as the Switchblade Kid for juvenile delinquents roles in films such as “Dino” & “Crime in the Streets”  Dino, originally done by Studio One Television, received great reviews and was later brought to the big screen, with Sal in the title role.  He played the raw emotion and rage of a young man returning home after suffering the brutalities of incarceration.  As Baby Gioia in “Crime in the Streets”, opposite a young John Cassavetes, he was a teenager trying to survive in the mean streets of the urban ghetto as a first generation American.  These characters were familiar to Mineo as his too was an urban childhood.   Born to a Sicilian immigrant father (Salvatore Mineo, Sr.) and a first generation Italian-American mother, he grew up on the streets of the Bronx while his parents struggled to raise four kids and build a business.  The Bronx in the 1940’s was a tough place, and although Sal was small, he was scrappy as hell.  He found himself removed from a few institutions of learning for fighting and in an effort to keep him from going down the wrong path his mother offered him dance lessons.  The dance lessons turned into acting and a career was launched.  By the time he was 11 years old he made his Broadway debut chasing a donkey across the stage in Tennessee Williams “The Rose Tattoo” and only a few years later he played the crown prince opposite Yul Brynner (who became a lifetime friend and a father figure) in Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I”.  Soon Hollywood was calling and life would never be the same.  Music though not a great love, like acting, would come to the fore as his mother Josephine, who managed his career, along with his agents at the time pushed him into a recording career to commercialize on his popularity among the teen set.  He was a commercial success, if not a great singer and he knew it.

Like so many child stars, Mineo, found his early success became a handicap to a future film career.  In 1960, he was cast by Otto Preminger in “Exodus” the story of the birth of the State of Israel from a novel by Leon Uris.  Mineo won the role of Dov Landau a young man who has spent his formative years in hell of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz where he was forced to remove the bodies from the gas chambers and where he reveals in a heartbreaking brilliant monologue how he was raped.  Sal stole the picture.  He garnered his second Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for best supporting actor.  On set he fell in love with Preminger’s latest discovery the 14-year-old delicate blonde beauty Jill Haworth, who played opposite him. 

Hit records, awards, fans, famous friends, invitations to every party, film opening, or hot club in town and a beautiful girl to share his bachelor digs – this was a dream life and then it stopped, as quickly as it began.  It was the 60’s and despite his talent, looks, and relative youth he couldn’t get arrested.  Mineo was an anachronism to the new Hollywood, who dismissed him along with the bobby soxers of yesterday.  He found that he was in debt, due to the inept management of his money, which had been spent to not only build his career, but to fund his father’s business and to pay family expenses.  Sal had been supporting a family of six on his earnings alone.

 

The next half of his life was about struggle – to find work, to live his artistic vision, to pay his debts, to develop his ideas and to discover himself.  Mineo’s sexuality has been bandied about for years, but it wasn’t until his early 20’s when he began to explore his attraction toward men.  He would say he was bi-sexual, although he mainly preferred men, and after Jill Haworth, although he dated women publicly, his intimate relationships were primarily with men. 

As you read you cannot help but wonder “what if…”.  What if he had lived longer; what if he had gotten some of the roles he longed for in films like “In Cold Blood” and “The Godfather”; what if he had lived in a time where his sexuality wasn’t a stumbling block to his career?  It was a short life, but one lived honestly, courageously, passionately.  Forever the image of youth in all its joys and sorrows he lives on in celluloid for future generations to discover and to fall a little in love with. 

A great read – get it before it hits the silver screen, as the multi-talented, James Franco (your co-host for this years Oscars) has recently optioned it for a film adaptation. 
  

Scenes from "Dino" & "Exodus"