Robert La Tourneaux

Robert La Tourneaux (November 22, 1941 – June 3, 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.

Biography Robert Earl LaTurno was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to James and Lucille LaTurno on November 22, 1941. He made his Broadway theatre debut in the 1967 musical Illya Darling while simultaneously playing the role of Mike Powers in the NBC soap opera The Doctors. 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. 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.

La Tourneaux also gave an interview to a gay magazine naming his famous married closeted bisexual lovers, alleging one of them to have been Academy Award-winning actor Christopher Walken. He also accused Walken of having an affair with another married actor, Robert Wagner, on the night of actress Natalie Wood's (Wagner's wife) unexplained death. Boys co-star Cliff Gorman and his wife cared for him during his illness and until his death. He was buried at Rosedale and Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey.

Work Love of Life (1951, TV series) - Jimmy Stanhope (1965–66) The Doctors (1963, TV series) - Mike Powers (1967) Illya Darling (1967 Broadway production) The Boys in the Band (1968 play) - Cowboy Tex The Boys in the Band (1970, film) - Cowboy Tex Von Richthofen and Brown (1971, film) - Ernest Udet Pilgrimage (1972, film) - Peter The Merchant of Venice (1973 Broadway production) Enemies (1974, TV film) - Officer (final television appearance)