Robert La Tourneaux
| Robert La Tourneaux | |
|---|---|
La Tourneaux in After Dark magazine, 1969
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| Born | 1940 United States |
| Died | 3 June 1986 (aged 45–46) New York City, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1960s–1983 |
Robert La Tourneaux (1940 – 3 June 1986) was an American actor best known for his role of Cowboy, the good-natured but dim hustler hired as a birthday present for a gay man, in the original Off-Broadway production and 1970 film version of The Boys in the Band.
La Tourneaux made his Broadway theatre debut in the 1967 musical Illya Darling. In 1968, he was part of the ensemble for Mart Crowley’s play The Boys in the Band, which opened on April 14, 1968 at Theater Four in New York City. The advertisement for the film version used head shots of Leonard Frey and La Tourneaux, with La Tourneaux identified as the "present" for Frey’s birthday-celebrating character. Many newspapers refused to run the advertisement.
After the film version of The Boys in the Band was released La Tourneaux’s career declined. His only other film performances were a supporting part in the Roger Corman film Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) and the independent film Pilgrimage. He also had a small role in a 1974 made-for-television version of the Maxim Gorky play Enemies.
On stage, La Tourneaux appeared in a small role in a Broadway revival of The Merchant of Venice; he was slated to appear in the 1977 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré, but was dropped from the cast prior to the show’s opening.
The openly gay La Tourneaux initially blamed his being typecast as a gay hustler for his inability to receive worthwhile roles, stating in a 1973 interview, "Boys was the kiss of death for me.” In the 1978 anthology Quentin Crisp’s Book of Quotations, La Tourneaux compared his career to another gay actor by saying, "Charles Laughton played every kind of part, but never a homosexual. People knew he was gay, but his public image [which included a wife] never betrayed his public reality. So he was safe. I wasn’t safe."
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