American actor Salvatore (Sal) Mineo was BOTD in 1939. Born in New York City to Italian immigrant parents, he studied acting from an early age, appearing as a child actor in the original Broadway productions of Tennessee Williams’ play The Rose Tattoo and the Rogers & Hammerstein musical The King and I. After appearances in television and supporting film roles, he became an overnight star in the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, playing Plato the “sensitive” (and queer-coded) teenager with a crush on James Dean. Nominated for an Oscar aged 17, his celebrity ballooned, becoming an object of desire for men and women. His beauty was well captured by artist Harold Stevenson in the giant nude study The New Adam. He continued playing troubled outsiders in films Giant (again opposite Dean), Tonka and Crime in the Streets, earning him the nickname “The Switchblade Kid”. Seeking to break his typecasting, he played a Holocaust victim in Exodus, earning a second Oscar nomination. As he grew older, film opportunities began to dry up, not helped by rumours of his homosexuality. In the late 1960s, he returned to theatre, directing a Los Angeles production of the gay-themed prison drama Fortune and Men’s Eyes. In 1972, he publicly confirmed his bisexuality, and found success playing a bisexual burglar in the comic play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. Mineo had affairs with men and women throughout his life, and was in a six-year relationship with boyfriend Courtney Barr. In 1976, Mineo was stabbed to death by an unknown attacker. He was 37. Three years later, an African-American man was convicted of Mineo’s murder, despite considerable doubts about his guilt.