STAGE REVIEWS : One-Man ‘Sal’ a Sympathetic Portrait of Bedeviled Mineo

Sal Mineo continues to cast a bizarre shadow over our imaginations.

When he was stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood carport in 1976, this tousle-haired, baby-faced actor was already identified as a bedeviled Hollywood victim. Was he really that misunderstood and strange?

The solo performance “Sal,” at the Zephyr Theatre, is an accessible, compassionate portrait that clarifies much of the murkiness.

Actor Carlos Gonzalez, who conceived the drama and co-wrote it with Hector Correa and Richard Talavera, is an uncanny Mineo look-alike. He impressively catches Mineo’s intensity and at times even his eager and earnest eyes.

A fictionalized account of the last hour of Mineo’s life, the play is framed by the actor rehearsing his role as the bisexual cat burglar in “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead,” a play he rehearsed at the Westwood Playhouse just hours before he was killed by an assailant who remains unknown.

As Gonzalez interrupts the rehearsal to hurtle through Mineo’s life and career, under the fluid direction of Bill English on a dark, bare stage, we hear an actor at age 37 describing what it’s like to be a star at 15, washed up at 23 and reduced to playing an ape in “The Planet of the Apes” at 27. (“I was the ape who dies,” says Mineo with a grin.)

Gradually, we see the pressure that a homosexual actor feels in Hollywood. Multiply that for Mineo in the ‘50s and ‘60s when Hollywood was mired in the closet. Subtly, rather than angrily, Hollywood homophobia becomes the unstated theme of the show.

Mineo’s experience directing and starring in the prison drama “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” “killed my movie career,” says Mineo. “I didn’t think I was doing a gay play, just a good play. Hollywood hated me for that.”

The production’s most surprising let’s-talk scene is Mineo’s touching reminiscence of his encounter with “closet gay” Robert Taylor. It’s a strange, nervous conversation between two actors fleeing Hollywood who meet at a sidewalk cafe in Europe. Opening up with candor to Taylor about being a movie actor and a homosexual, Mineo is rebuffed and told that “it isn’t political to talk about these things.” Adds Mineo: “Later I understood--Taylor was a Hollywood survivor.”

Facing off-stage reporters in the impressionistic staging, Mineo is brashly grilled on whether he ever slept with James Dean, a question he refuses to answer. But Dean’s friendship on the set of the accursed “Rebel Without a Cause” (all of the movie’s stars later died violently) lends “Sal” some of its most aching moments.

Gonzalez plants Mineo in the ranks of the mangled ex-child stars who managed to stay sane and even optimistic. He ultimately sees “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” as a life-salvaging experience. And as “Sal” draws to a close, a relaxed, smiling Mineo beams about a new lover, Courtney (a cast member of the New York production of “Fortune and Men’s Eyes”), en route to live with him in Hollywood. So the show’s final note is upbeat, despite the impending tragedy.

* “Sal,” Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends July 19. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour.