Ian Winningkoff: From "Sulphur Springs" to "Grease," with some teen idol costars and hunky Danny Zukos

 

The New Orleans-based actor, model, and basketball star Ian Winningkoff has eight acting credits on the IMDB.

Including Secrets of Sulphur Springs, a Disney Channel teen thriller about kids who travel back in time to uncover the secrets. Preston Oliver plays focus character Griffin.

And several locally-produced shorts, including Revelation, Dies Irae, Good Girl, and Birthday Surprise. Eli Barron is his usual costar.

Ian's most famous role to date is Young Chuck Montgomery in Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones.  In a flashback to 2000, he plays a sort of backwoods Tom Sawyer/ Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan terrorized by his hard-core  fundamentalist parents.  He grows up to become one of his father's most loyal militia men, played by Lukas Haas. 

Ian is also deeply involved in local New Orleans theater.  He has appeared in Legally Blonde, The Addams Family, Shrek, and Into the Woods, Jr.

Most recently Ian played Kenickie, focus character Danny Zuko's best bud, in Grease.  

More Ian after the break

Joseph Cali: Nude model before Stonewall, John Travolta's disco buddy, soap opera hunk, Adonis Male

In 1968, a year before Stonewall, 18-year old Joseph Cali was playing chess and cruising in Washington Square Park in Manhattan when he was approached by George Haimsohn, author of Stories of the Homosexual Life, The Gay Psychedelic Sex Book, The Gay Coloring Book, A Summer on Fire Island, and the book and libretto for the musical Dames at Sea, which was currently playing off-Broadway.

Haimsohn was also a photographer, working under the name Plato, and invited Joe to model. 

His first full frontal photo appears in a 1968 issue of Go Guys.  The text says that Joe is a "fast shooting star on the physique horizon....well equipped to handle himself in any tight spot."  Tell me more, tell me more, did he get very far?

  

The photo set and magazine work paid for Joe's tuition at Siena College, where he led anti-war protests, starred in the play Drunkard, and worked as a stage manager for The Gingham Dog. 

 

He moved to Los Angeles in 1973, and continued to pose for the Model of the Month Club and Photozique, while making the rounds of auditions.

Joe's big break came in 1977, when he was cast as Joey, best buddy of John Travolta's Tony in the disco drama Saturday Night Fever

More Brooklyn-disco roles followed, including Flatbush, a tv series about a gang called the Fungos.  Joe starred as Presto opposite Adrian Zmed as Socks.  It only lasted for six episodes.

He got 19 episodes of Today's FBI in 1981-82 as Nick, the "Ethnic" member of the team according to Wikipedia.  I'm not sure what his ethnicity was.

More Joseph Cali after the break. Warning: Explicit