Focus Features

On February 12, 1976, the actor Sal Mineo was returning home from a rehearsal for the play P.S. Your Cat is Dead when he was attacked in an alley behind his West Hollywood apartment. Before he could be carried to the hospital, the 37-year-old actor was dead from a single stab wound from his attacker, a tragic end to an actor whose life ironically revolved around the themes of crime and death. Mineo was born in East Harlem to a father who made caskets. From an early age, Mineo joined up with local street gangs, committing petty theft and assault. Legend has it that after being caught stealing, a judge gave the young man a choice: juvenile detention or acting school. The truth is a little less dramatic: Mineo had been performing, mostly as a dancer, from early childhood. At 14, Mineo got his big break, starring alongside Yul Brynner in the Broadway staging of A King and I in 1953. At 16, Mineo was cast by Nicholas Ray as James Dean's friend Plato in Rebel Without A Cause, a part that would change his life. Mineo, who previously had never thought of himself as gay, was pushed by Dean to explore those feelings for the part. Later, after Mineo had come out, he claimed, “We never became lovers, but we could have -- like that.” His performance also earned Mineo an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. For the next decade, Mineo carved out a successful career as both actor and singer, but by the sixties, his sensitive boyish face was replaced by that of an adult, and his popularity waned. In his last years, he was picking up mostly bit parts in TV shows, although he hoped the new play P.S. Your Cat is Dead might jumpstart his career. Initially, the police investigation into his murder targeted gay men in the entertainment industry, but the case soon stalled. Then nearly a year and a half after Mineo’s death, police arrested Lionel Williams, a petty criminal, for the murder. Even though the evidence was sketchy, the prosecution convicted him, leaving many to speculate that Mineo’s real killer was still at large.