Stockwell had two more prestigious film roles in the early 1960s. Reviving his career after five years, Stockwell returned to New York where he co-starred with Roddy McDowall on Broadway in “Compulsion,” a 1957 drama based on the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case in which two college students killed a 14-year-old boy for the thrill of it. But, he said, “I came back each time because I had no other training.” It wasn’t fun.” It wasn’t the only time he dropped out. “I found acting very difficult from the beginning. “I never really wanted to be an actor,” he said. Still, he stressed, it wasn’t always easy, and he dropped out of the business when he reached 16. “I was very lucky to have a loving and caring and sympathetic mother and not a stage mother,” he told The Associated Press in 1989.
Films in his youth also included “Down to the Sea in Ships,” with Lionel Barrymore “The Secret Garden,” with Margaret O’Brien and “Stars in My Crown” with Joel McCrea. He had the title roles in the 1948 anti-war film “The Boy With Green Hair,” about a war orphan whose hair changes color, and “Kim,” the 1950 version of the Rudyard Kipling tale, which starred Errol Flynn. In the next few years, Stockwell appeared in such films as the Oscar-winning anti-Semitism drama “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” with Gregory Peck, as well as “Song of the Thin Man,” the last of the William Powell-Myrna Loy mystery series, with Stockwell playing their son. His first significant role was as Kathryn Grayson’s nephew in the 1945 musical “Anchors Aweigh,” which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The show lasted from 1989 to 1993.Ī producer at MGM was impressed by Dean and persuaded the studio to sign him. As his colleague, “The Observer,” Stockwell lends his help but is seen only on a holographic computer image. Starring with Stockwell in “Quantum Leap” was Scott Bakula, playing a scientist who assumes different identities in different eras after a time-travel experiment goes awry. “If people hadn’t seen me in ‘Married To the Mob’ they wouldn’t have realized I could do comedy.”
“It’s the first time anyone’s offered me a series and the first time I’ve ever wanted to do one,” he said in 1989.
His Oscar-nominated role as Tony “The Tiger” Russo, a flamboyant gangster, in the 1988 hit “Married to the Mob” led to his most notable TV role the following year, in NBC’s science fiction series “Quantum Leap.” Both roles had strong comic elements. “But as you live your life, you compile so many millions of experiences and bits of information that you become a richer vessel as a person. “My way of working is still the same as it was in the beginning - totally intuitive and instinctive,” he told The New York Times in 1987.
In his 20s, he starred on Broadway as a young killer in the play “Compulsion” and in prestigious films such as “Sons and Lovers.” He was awarded best actor at the Cannes Film Festival twice, in 1959 for the big-screen version of “Compulsion” and in 1962 for Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” While his career had some lean times, he reached his full stride in the 1980s. The dark-haired Stockwell was a Hollywood veteran by the time he reached his teens. He was a rebel, wildly talented and always a breath of fresh air.” “Because of that, when he had a job, he was grateful. “Dean spent a lifetime yo-yoing back and forth between fame and anonymity,” his family said in a statement. In a peripatetic career, he quit show business several times, including at age 16 and again in the 1980s, when he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to sell real estate.
Stockwell’s own relationship with acting, having started on Broadway at age 7, was complicated. Stockwell was Oscar-nominated for his comic mafia kingpin in “Married to the Mob” and was four times an Emmy-nominee for “Quantum Leap.” But in a career that spanned seven decades, Stockwell was a supreme character actor whose performances - lip-syncing Roy Orbison in a nightmarish party scene in “Blue Velvet,” a desperate agent in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” Howard Hughes in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” - didn’t have to be lengthy to be mesmerizing. Jay Schwartz, a family spokesperson, said Stockwell died of natural causes at home Sunday. NEW YORK (AP) - Dean Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age in the sci-fi series “Quantum Leap” and in a string of indelible performances in film, including David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” and Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob,” has died. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.