Discuss Dean Stockwell
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Superb child actor
posted by rudely_murraySTAFFMOD on July 29, 2019 at 8:37 AM
I first knew Dean Stockwell as a middle-aged character actor in the ‘80s, memorable in such films as Blue Velvet and Married to the Mob and, of course, the TV series Quantum Leap. It was only much later that I discovered what a fine actor he was a child in the 1940s and 50s - for evidence, see Stars in My Crown, The Happy Years or the delightfully odd The Boy with Green Hair.
As a young adult he was good in Compulsion (a lesser-known but fine film based on the same murder case as Hitchcock’s Rope) and excellent among the heavyweight cast of Long Day’s Journey into Night. But it is his juvenile roles that really cement his place in film history, I would say. He had a natural charm and also an acting range rare among cinematic kids of any era.
Do you have any favourite Dean Stockwell performances or movies?
Reply by genplant29
on July 29, 2019 at 9:50 AM
From his childhood years, I mainly remember him from The Boy with Green Hair (1948) and Kim (1950), each in which he was very good. I otherwise mainly know him from the Quantum Leap t.v. series.
Reply by rudely_murray
on July 29, 2019 at 10:18 AM
I really need to see Kim. I have vague memories of seeing it when I was a kid but I could be confusing it with the '80s version with Peter O'Toole.
Reply by genplant29
on July 29, 2019 at 5:19 PM
I remember that I've also seen Stockwell's version of The Secret Garden (1949), though viewed it so many years ago that now I no longer am able to recall anything about it.
Reply by QuitePleasant
on July 29, 2019 at 8:53 PM
Yes, I would go out of my way to watch Dean Stockwell in anything because he really knows his craft and commands screen attention.
Good that he very capable transforms from child actor into his solid adult performance in film and on television, which is where I've seen him more often than in film.
Surprised to learn that Dean is a younger brother of actor Guy Stockwell, who both guest star in different episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Guy does about three roles there. In one somebody gets poisoned, and in another somebody shoots the window out of his tavern, anytime Jessica comes to town.
Sadly, they say that Dean hasn't been in the best of health in recent years. He has been confined to a wheelchair at one point, but I'm not certain exactly how he's doing now.
Still, Guy as Dean's real-life brother equals something akin to Randy as Dennis Quaid's real-life brother. Who would have guessed it?"
Reply by genplant29
on July 29, 2019 at 11:24 PM
I hadn't realized, until I checked after seeing the present TMDb thread hours ago, that Dean Stockwell is still alive, aged 83; somehow I've not seen (or heard of) him in anything new in several years, so just - by default - assumed "he must be dead". It's very good to see that's not the case, and that he continued to do a fair amount of new work throughout recent years (though apparently nothing new since 2015, with 2014 being the most recent year in which he had multiple projects).
Reply by Forty-1212
on August 4, 2019 at 9:24 PM
Very impressive career, D Stockwell, for some 72 years of acting credits spanning eight decades. Very few other stars are able to match such stamina in the difficult film and television industry.
Didn't realize that Stockwell has performed in as many productions as he has over the course of his stellar career.
Critics have written that he's one of the few child stars who makes a great career as a grownup, and they really hit the nail on the head with comments like those, along with the rest of your accurate observations of this very talented, gifted, pleasant and congenial leading man.