My 5 Favorite Performances from Dean Stockwell (Plus 1 Least Favorite)

Dean Stockwell passed away on November 7, 2021. When I first leaped (ha!) into slashfic in the early 2000s, I became massively hyper-fixated on him in my love of the Sam/Al pairing from Quantum Leap. It was then I realized how broad his career was, having three different high points: as a child actor in the 40s, as a handsome lead in the 50s, and then the award-winning years of the early 90s.

He never really left the industry, although he almost gave up and went into real estate in the 80s before that revival, and his IMDB page has over 200 credits. I spent a good chunk of time ‘circulating the tapes’, as it were, of some of his more obscure roles – ranging from audio drama to guest-starring roles on TV.

In honor of his life, here are my 5 favorite performances of his (and my 1 least favorite).

Quantum Leap

Of course I have to start with what is probably his best-known role. As Al Calavicci, the hologram sidekick in the anthology drama Quantum Leap, Dean started out as ‘just’ the sidekick. In fact, I wrote about how his portrayal of Al led me to realize I apparently have a thing for sidekicks in my essay on Martin Freeman.

As the show progressed, his character developed from a one-trope stereotype to a fully developed person, with heartache and trauma part of his past but not affecting his present. As I dove into fanfic, I also found fascinating the concept that his life would inevitably be changed (sometimes multiple times) by Sam’s leaps. The parallels of him being a POW from Vietnam and Sam being a POW of time was also explored.

The show consistently dressed him in outrageous clothing: partly to show off the ‘futuristic future’ of 1995, but also so that Al was ‘noticeably different’ from the historical background. However, Dean managed to wear everything with style, and his ‘unusual’ fashion choices became a trope in fanfic.

As I wrote in that essay on Martin Freeman, when I first watched the show, I related to Sam. But when I re-watched it as I got into slashfic, it was Al I connected to.

Married to the Mob

Ah, the movie that made me realize Dean Stockwell is one of a very small handful of people who would be allowed to call me “Angela”.

I actually just did a re-watch of this in honor of Dean’s passing. It’s a very 80s rom com, stereotypes galore, yet is still highly entertaining. Dean plays Tony “The Tiger” Russo, a mob boss who has a temper that ends up being his downfall.

The clothes are the primary reason to watch him in this, as he is gloriously clothed throughout in fine suits and looks gorgeous. Dean pulls out all his comedy chops in his role.

And while it’s not anything hard-hitting, it’s one of those films that looks like everyone involved just had a field day filming, Dean included. (I vaguely remember reading an interview that mentioned his reaction to the production company paying money for him to sing “Happy Birthday”, as the song was still under copyright at the time.) Dean was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this (the only time he was nominated, if I recall correctly), but lost to Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda.

Anchors Aweigh

How many child actors can say they held their own against Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra?

Dean got his start as a child actor, most notably in The Boy with Green Hair. He was in a wide range of films as a child actor, from The Secret Garden to playing opposite Errol Flynn in Kim. (He once stated in an interview that Flynn gave him a pin for his FFF Club – “Flynn’s Flying Fucker”.)

I have been a Gene Kelly fan since I first was introduced to movie musicals from my mom, and so it’s likely I had seen Anchors Aweigh prior to becoming a fan of Dean. However, watching it post-crush was fascinating as well. He’s adorable as a little tyke, and his character’s desire to join the Navy has some unintentional humor to it due to his QL character being in the organization.

He sings (sort of) in this, albeit the title song, and is key to one of the reasons this movie is famous: Gene Kelly dancing with the animated Tom and Jerry.

Battlestar Galactica

Unfortunately, Dean was unintentionally a victim of a fandom war. I won’t go into the details here, but there was a major kerfuffle in the Dean Stockwell fandom I belonged to, and it was vicious enough to where I lost a lot of my interest in him, because it was hard to separate the actor from the fandom drama.

So, when I started watching the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, imagine my surprise when in the second season finale, he pops up as Brother Cavil, who (spoiler alert) ends up being a Cylon.

The rebooted BSG has a lot in common with Sherlock, most notably that the first two seasons are great and the other two seasons … are not so great. His character was one of those that made it worth slogging through some of the bad plot and character choices that went on, as Cavil was consistently debating what exactly made someone human.

His appearance made me remember why I liked him as an actor so much, and I started the slow journey back to liking him as an actor as a result.

Blue Velvet

I was already familiar with David Lynch thanks to Twin Peaks, but that was nowhere near enough of an introduction to the dark and demented Blue Velvet.

Like Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, Dean’s appearance in Blue Velvet is short but effective. He’s in the film maybe ten minutes total, but steals the movie as Ben, the leader of a group of criminals that our film’s antagonist played by Dennis Hopper is a part of. He plays the part with implications that he and Hopper’s character are ‘more than friends’, flirting and giggling with not only Hopper’s character, but our lead Kyle McLauchlan with non-con implications as to what he’d like to do to him.

During his scene, he lip syncs to Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams”, leaving me to never hear this song again without being slightly creeped out by it. The image of him in his outfit, ‘singing’ in a work light and cigarette in hand, is forever burned into my mind as one of disturbing beauty.

Dean did a number of films with Dennis Hopper during the 70s and 80s, all of them embracing the counterculture of the time. Blue Velvet is the best of the best, and is one of Dean’s best performances.

Plus 1 Least Favorite: Human Highway

With over 200 credits, Dean has his share of duds. Whether it’s the overacting of The Langoliers or the casting gag of putting him in the reboot of The Dunwich Horror due to his being in the original, there are plenty of performances that I’d rather just forget.

As such, there is one film of Dean’s I immediately go to when someone asks for bad movies.

Human Highway is one of those movies with Dennis Hopper discussed above, and also stars Russ Tamblyn. The cast includes the music group Devo (who also perform in the movie).

Directed by Neil Young under a pseudonym and co-directed by Stockwell himself, the film is a comedy from 1982 that is just straight up bizarre. The performance by Devo is basically a music video and comes out of nowhere, the plot is nonsensical, and the characters are all over the place. The movie is a perfect example that weird doesn’t necessarily mean entertaining. The film isn’t MST3K bad, but is just dull, the run time of 88 minutes dragging on to feel like you slogged through a three-hour foreign film.

Summary

Of course, there are plenty of other performances of Dean’s I love. Despite my mentioning the overacting in it, The Langoliers is surprisingly campy in the best way. He’s also great as Howard Hughes in Tucker: The Man and His Dream. I also tried to pick a movie from his era where he was basically a carbon copy of James Dean, but couldn’t pick just one. And how could I miss mentioning his eyebrows in Lynch’s Dune?

What are your favorite roles of his? Comment below! See all my 5 Fandom Friday posts here.