19 YO Don Johnson and another actor in the Los Angeles production of “Fortune and Mens Eyes”, 1969

Sal Mineo and Don Johnson

That's Entertainment!

Sal Mineo

OP, I recently read about this production and the commotion it caused in Los Angeles in 1969. It sounded racy and hot. I wish I could've been there.

These are the only 15 minutes of footage from this play.

Whatevery he is - I never bought the Don Johnson is hetersexual

Gary Tigerman and Don Johnson

Is it true the tagline was “Don’t Drop the Soap?”

I’ve never seen anything from that production, it’s incredible to finally see some of it. But oy vey, it’s like an SCTV skit.

Sexy sluts

This becomes extra exciting if the rumors of Don's huge endowment are true.

I love the tighty-whities. They really need to make a comeback!

A biography of Sal Mineo tells the story that Sal loved seeing guys in their tighty whities.

Guys would come to the house to audition for a part, and Sal would ask them to strip down - usually followed by sex.

His boyfriend was leaving the house one afternoon when a guy came to the door. The boyfriend said Sal was in the bedroom waiting for the guy.

It was Jay North - the former Dennis The Menace......he didn't get the part. Well, the part in the play.

R15, apparently I have more in common with Sal Mineo than just gay and ethnicity ;)

It was theater acting not toned to for film. Johnson and Mineo were good.

[quote]This becomes extra exciting if the rumors of Don's huge endowment are true.

He has debunked the myth.

Don Johnson was a cutie. And is still an attractive man to this day. I found him very good and handsome in Knives Out.

Looks like a DL production!

Did Sal suck Don off??

Jay North would have been a great fuck for Sal.

The Dennis the Menace actor was NUTS!

Michael Greer is the same character in everything he’s in! Whet to Greer?

Jay North was a messy, BITTER fatass when I saw him on Donahue in the late '80s. Whoo faaaa!

In the book he "wrote" with his brother Clint, Ron Howard said that the best young actors of his generation on TV were Johnny Crawford and Jay North!

Jay North on Donahue in the '80s had a serial killer look in his eyes.

Audience: Jay, where are your parents these days?

Jay North: They're burning in hell.

Quite a charmer, he.

Jay North is gay, right?

He seems to be R28. He was a state trooper in Florida for awhile.

And if we had been treated by our parents they way his parents treated him.....we might feel the same way.

Jay needs to write a book!

The pics are so hot. It's like Bijou porn.

R7 I found that clip captivating. I wish the entire show was available to watch. The acting from Sal Mineo and Don Johnson was amazing.

Someone is selling the original 1969 Playbill for $100. Inside you see Sal dedicated the production to James Dean.

That recording at r7 isn’t from the live play in full, but an episode of Theatre Beat, a series that would have casts come perform a few scenes for tv audiences. I believe it was a local series in LA.

I don’t think a full recording of the actual live play exists.

And what’s wrong with Bijou porn?

I grew up on IT!

The NYC revival cast. Of course it was still directed by Sal Mineo, but everyone in the cast was new (usually the case with revivals). Tommy Lee Jones took played Rocky in the NYC production, the character Sal Mineo originated. Don Johnson was the only original cast member Mineo asked to come recreate the character of Smitty in NYC, but he rejected the offer.

The original premiered in LA, January 1969, and the revival October 1969, NYC.

R11 it looks like an SCTV skit because that is a tv episode to a Los Angeles series that would bring actors from plays to perform a few scenes on television that wasn’t the actual stage or set the play too place in. That is the only reason those 15 minutes exist. The play was never recorded and couldn’t be at the time because it featured a lot of stuff that was very very controversial at the time. The play caused an uproar in Los Angeles and closed after a few short months.

I’m always a bit surprised by how explicit the promo images are for this production. It’s basically porn. I’m surprised they got away with it.

The play was was a scandal and was pretty much erased from memory. Luckily that clip from Theatre Beat exists and some photos from the play exist, but footage of the play itself do not.

When you look back at this production, you see Sal Mineo directed something that was ahead of its time and very raw and real. It was truly groundbreaking in retrospect, but at the time was a complete scandal and upset many. However, it truly was a groundbreaking play and was the first stage production to include a simulated rape scene with full nudity between two men. Up until this time, there had never been a nude sex scene portrayed on stage even by members of the opposite sex, so one can imagine the public uproar evoked in the late 60's by a man being raped by another man, and it being explicitly acted out right there. It wasn’t implied that Smitty was raped like plays tended to do back then, it was explicitly shown, with full frontal nudity and all. I think if this came out today many would applaud it for its boldness (not everyone, of course. It would have its haters too) but that certainly wasn’t the case in 1969.

What twink should be offered the Don Johnson role in a remake?

¡Froy!

Well I never in all my life!

Noah Schnapp.

Lmao no r42 r40. He wasn’t a twink. He wasn’t some small effeminate man. He was a macho man and criminal. Smitty wasn’t some little queen.

The plays one straight character is the one who gets raped.

[quote] Well I never in all my life! —Melanie

Have had plastic surgery?

I wonder if Don Johnson has ever spoken about this play. Probably not. I would love for someone to ask him about this.

The two actors originally involved in the graphic rape scene in the Los Angeles production were Sal Mineo as "Rocky" and nineteen year-old Don Johnson as "Smitty". Rocky brutally rapes Smitty and it’s a very graphic scene. Both actors did full nudity for the scene. Don Johnson declined the NYC production when Mineo asked him to do it.

Don Johnson was beautiful? I never knew. I mean, he was hot back around Miami Vice, but I had never seen him younger.

If he was hot around Miami Vice why wouldn’t he have been hot while younger? Some people are beautiful since young. He’s also aged very well.

Johnson was an attractive young man but he was fortunate to have a face that got better with age. He looked very handsome in Miami Vice and then Nash Bridges later.

You whores know you would have devoured his cock if given the opportunity back in the 80s.

Ok, I get it now. I never thought Dakota Johnson looked like either of her parents (well, Melanie Griffith doesn’t even look like Melanie Griffith anymore) but I can totally see it in the pic at r9.

Dakota Johnson looks exactly like her 19 year old dad!

Don and his penis.

R38, your description to the public response to Fortune and Mens Eyes would also be an accurate summation of the original script for Lucille Ball's Stone Pillow, before it was given the "Hollywood Treatment," by those in Lucy's "inner circle" who didn't want to soil her image as America's favorite funny lady, despite the fact that it could have changed the trajectory of her career.

Or could have killed her image and career r52.

Shirley/R53, you jest.

Only Michael Greer reprised his stage role in the film.

Beans and Franks!

R55 he also reprised his character in the NY revival but only stayed very very briefly before leaving. I’m not sure if he ever made it to opening not or not. Don Johnson declined immediately and I’m not sure if Gary Tigerman was invited or not. It’s never been mentioned anywhere.

Opening night* or not.

No one ever acknowledges that Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith first met when she was 14 and he was 22.

There was a trailer released for the 15 minutes of footage that was recovered.

I never knew how I felt about Don Johnson. He was just a handsome celeb to me who was a big tv star for being handsome and charismatic but not necessarily a good actor. However, having charisma is a gift in itself. He seemed full of himself in the 80s though.

However, time and age changes us and when I saw him on WWHL a few years ago I realized I liked him a lot. His honesty is refreshing and he’s still charming. I love how honest he is about doing cocaine and so casual about it. So many celebs are such phonies about it even though so many of them do it or used to when younger but would never admit that, not Don lol.

This was actually Johnson’s very first professional acting gig.

I see your Fortune and Men's Eyes and raise you an And Puppy Dog Tails.

He's always been a handsome man - and continues to be so now in his 70's.

It's rare someone is that consistently good-looking for so many decades, but he's pulled it off.

Catch “A Boy and his Dog” where Republicans forcefully milk Don at Mara Lago.

He actually has one of those blessed faces that gets more handsome as it shows some age. He was an attractive young man in his teens and 20s but got more handsome in his 30s and then 40s. When you started seeing lines on by his eyes and forehead and a little sagging in his eyelids he actually looked more handsome than when he was very youthful looking.

Dustin Hoffman workshopped the play at the New York Actors Studio in 1966, taking the role of Rocky, while Jon Voight played Smitty. I suppose that was the nucleus of the two working together on Midnight Cowboy.

At r51, it's clear he's not endowed

R68 no one cares. He can be a grower. Good thing he wasn’t a porn star

[quote] not Don lol

LoL! :)

What does 70 possess?

Sal promoting the play on The Mike Douglas Show. He is promoting the NY revival here. The LA one was done. Also, they make sure to not acknowledge the homosexuality that is in the play, for obvious reasons. They probably weren’t even allowed to acknowledge it at the time without getting in trouble.

We also learn that the Smitty character is only 17, which explains his youthful naivety before he gets brutally raped by Rocky.

The most interesting thing about the interview at r72 is around the 5 minute mark when they start discussing the generation gap between young people and older people. I know DLers like to act like “generation” chatter is newer and that back then Boomers and Gen X didn’t speak of generational shit but they really did. It’s always been a topic and every generation feels a disconnect from the previous one in ways, minus those who are more in the middle of the two, like Sal acknowledges here when he states he’s 30 so he gets the younger people with some things and older people with others.

R66 - my partner is like that. While he was handsome/cute when he was younger, my partner entered serious HOT category in his 50's.

He's now 66 and his years of using ZERO sunscreen while being sun-worshipper for decades is taking it's toll, but I still find him more attractive now than he was when he was 30.

He's 13 years older than me - but I think I'm the lucky one. Shhh...don't tell anyone.

Imagine that? 19 year old Don Johnson steps into the audition room. Mineo must've been like "everyone else! Go home!"

Circa 1997 I assistant directed a series of plays. True West, then 3 original plays. The Toilet, Will Williams and Violencia. I would advertise in Backstage West and get hundreds of headshots. Some pretty hot actors. But I wound up always getting sad, because there was such an air of desperation about many of them.

The first play True West turned out pretty well. Then, The Toilet was a SMASH. Pick of the Week in LA Weekly.

For the last one, we finally at long last got the LA Times to come and review us. It, uhhh, did NOT go well. I'll post the review below.

Here's the review that ended the Los Angeles theater party for me (R75)

Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles, Calif. Author: F. KATHLEEN FOLEY Date: Dec 10, 1999 Start Page: 39 Section: Calendar; PART- F; Entertainment Desk Document Types: Theater Review Text Word Count: 248

(Copyright, The Times Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 1999 all Rights reserved)

If, in defiance of all taste and common sense, you insist upon seeing Peter Wilson's "Violencia" at the Lost Studio, you may have to dip into your Y2K stash of Prozac a little early. Wilson, who also directed this protracted purgatory of a play, obviously subscribes to the assault-and-battery school of play writing, in which craft, motivation and context are eviscerated by shock value.

Scenes of nonlinear degeneracy are thrown together with little regard for form.

The play lasts almost three hours, but the barrage of extraneous unpleasantness proves wearying after the first five minutes. The staging is sloppy, the lighting self-consciously murky. From what little we can derive about the plot, we surmise that these characters are amoral pleasure-seekers intent on violating moral taboos and pushing the limits of human sensation to grisly new levels. But even that's an iffy guess.

Perhaps he intended his "dramedy" as a sendup of the darker- than-dark genre so prevalent in current theater. But it's all relentlessly pretentious, sustained at a pitch of hormonal excess.

Wilson bludgeons home the message that people are violent and vile, predators and victims trapped in an unending cycle of moral depravity. But it is the play that seems unending--and the hapless actors, a few of them genuinely talented, who are the real victims here.

* "Violencia," the Lost Studio, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. Fridays and Saturdays, 9 p.m. Ends Feb. 5. $15. (323) 769-5809. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.

Holy shit. This is WILD. Likely closer to the truth than they realized while making it. Yikes.

From Not Necessarily the News on HBO:

"If he was hot around Miami Vice why wouldn’t he have been hot while younger? Some people are beautiful since young. He’s also aged very well. "

Because plenty of people are beautiful when very young, but that status doesn't continue throughout their life.

Is Don cut or uncut?

It's too bad there isn't a digitally remastered version of "The Harrad Experiment" (1973):

R79 get a job

R51, lovely bush.

R76, if it helps, Kathleen Foley reads like an insufferable cunt. She could probably use a dick or six.

Why so hostile r80?

I have to say Don had a nice ass in OP’s photo.

R84, the black dude on the left agrees!

And I can see what part of the black dude Don is googling.

That's a beautiful bum

Michael Greer is incredible on screen in the film version. Totally steals the show. What a performance!

I never found Don handsome during his MV days but he's gorgeous in these photos.

As in, angelic perfection.

“Shakespeare at the Christmas show!”

Michael Greer was a wonderful actor, and though he mostly played gay characters on stage (and did very little film), he gives another terrific performance, this time as a straight lothario, in a 1970s horror film called Messiah of Evil.

[quote] I never found Don handsome during his MV days but he's gorgeous in these photos. As in, angelic perfection.

He was always purdy.

He was very funny in Knives Out as an asshole MAGA Trumper. He should've had more screen time.

They all had plenty of screentime, him included.

He should've had a bit more. He and Jamie Lee were the best things about that movie.

R95 in your opinion.

I liked Toni Collette

“A mink coat!”

I enjoyed Michael Greer in The Gay Deceivers (also 1969).

R67 yes, but the play originally didn’t have the rape scene in it. The rape happens but it is implied and not physically shown and there was no nudity. Sal Mineo made changes to the play and decided to show the brutal raping of 17 year old Smitty and include full nudity and he included more violence and added more sexual banter to the dialogue. This upset John Herbert (the writer of the play).

“Sal Mineo directed the 1969 Los Angeles production "Fortune and Men's Eyes and played the role of Rocky, a prison bully, who rapes a naive young prisoner, Smitty (played by Don Johnson in the L.A. production). Mineo's staging emphasized violence and sexuality. He added a scene to the play, staging Rocky's rape of Smitty in the prison shower, an event that had been kept off stage in earlier productions. The Los Angeles production, which was eventually moved to New York (without Mineo as an actor) featured full frontal nudity. Mineo also directed a subsequent San Francisco production. Although playwright John Herbert did not initially object to Mineo's alterations, he vociferously criticized Mineo's Los Angeles and New York stagings. (Being a convicted felon, the Canadian Herbert was unable to enter the U.S. to actually see the productions.) Herbert refused to sell him the film rights to his play, and the estrangement obviated any chance of Mineo being involved in the 1971 movie version of the play.”

[quote]This becomes extra exciting if the rumors of Don's huge endowment are true.

As others have pointed out, and provided supporting evidence via screen caps, Don Johnson had at least one brief full-frontal nude scene in THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT, which proved that his endowment is only average.

Because, as we all know, a hard dick is exactly the same size as a soft dick.

Don Johnson was with the American Conservatory Theatre and in some production in San Francisco when Sal Mineo saw him and instantly took a liking to him and requested he audition for the role of Smitty. Don flew to LA and was the 257th young actor to audition. He flew back to SF right after auditioning and by the time he landed Mineo had already sent a telegram letting him know he got the part, but only if he was willing to lose 10 pounds and lean out a bit more. Johnson obliged and lost the 10 pounds.

[quote]Because, as we all know, a hard dick is exactly the same size as a soft dick.

No one said otherwise, and obviously, we can only judge it in its flaccid state from what we see in that movie.

Sorry, what I meant was -- no one said "a hard dick is exactly the same size as a soft dick."

Someone said the photo "proved that his endowment is only average" when it does nothing of the sort. We have no idea how big he is when hard, and that's the only measurement that really matters when it comes to dick size

[quote]Someone said the photo "proved that his endowment is only average" when it does nothing of the sort. We have no idea how big he is when hard, and that's the only measurement that really matters when it comes to dick size.

Some people think there's something very hot about a big, thick, flaccid dick hanging between a guy's legs. In fact, some people think that's hotter than a huge erection, because the latter can be a problem when it actually comes to having sex. Your mileage may vary.

Plus, in addition to what we see in THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT, apparently Johnson himself has said that his penis is not exceptionally large -- though I have no idea if he was talking about what it looks like soft and/or hard.

[quote]Because, as we all know, a hard dick is exactly the same size as a soft dick.

Are there any gay men left on DL?

r107 If you seriously couldn't detect the sarcasm in my post, you're beyond help

I wasn't being serious r107.

I’ve seen the movie several times. I think it’s well done. Zoey Hall is still living. His career never really took off.

How many times are we gong over this, he debunked Pamela DeBarres claim he was huge. She said it to get publicity for her book as he was a big star then.

I'm sure it's perfectly lovely.

Adding Don's one-afternoon audition from r102 with r15 creepy casting couch stories about Sal tells us something went down to score Don the part?

R113 pretty sure not.

Sal also popped Bobby Sherman’s cherry.

Don’t start your bullshit stories. Jesus.

It wasn’t a one on one audition. Producers were there also. Not everything is a fucking casting couch story.

I wish I could watch this production

Call me old fashioned, but as long as Don Johnson's dick is still attached to Don Johnson, I wouldn't quibble about the size one way or the other.

You're old fashioned. And so am I :-)

R118, me too. I want to see the rest of the clip at R7.

Is Don cut or uncut?

R122 he’s a white American. It’s not hard to guess.

I had no idea there was footage of this. The script is terrible and fantastically so. Don is a delicious snack pouch. (has a delicious snack in his Y pouch).

How did they hide his erection during the production?

Certainly the LA police in 1969 would have arrested him could they see it.