Career
Louisiana 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 Louisiana Tourneaux, with Louisiana 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 Louisiana 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, Louisiana 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 Louisiana 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 medical ” In the 1978 anthology Quentin Crisp’s Book of Quotations, Louisiana 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 never betrayed his public reality. So he was safe. I wasn’t safe."
Unable to secure work as an actor Louisiana Tourneaux began nude modeling in gay men"s magazines and in 1978 performed nude in a one-man cabaret act at the Ramrod, a New York City theater showing gay pornography films.
He eventually became a prostitute.
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. In 1983, Louisiana Tourneaux was arrested for assault after trying to extract money from a client and was incarcerated at the Rikers Island prison.
While in prison, Louisiana Torneaux attempted suicide. In the early 1980s, Louisiana Tourneaux contracted Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and received news coverage when he sought legal channels to prevent being evicted from his apartment when his landlord objected to the presence of a live-in caregiver.