Robert La Tourneaux

Robert La Tourneaux (August 10, 1940 – 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 between August 8 and 15, 1940. La Tourneaux 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. 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.