To many TV viewers, Dean Stockwell was the actor who filled catchy supporting roles in “Quantum Leap” and beyond.
But Stockwell was also a child star. On Nov. 22, a Turner Classic Movies marathon will have seven films he made before he was a teen-ager, including “Kim” (show here with Errol Flynn) and “The Secret Garden”; most of them were dead-serious, many had crying scenes.
Stockwell died Sunday (Nov. 7) at 85, six years after he had a stroke and retired from acting. By then, people knew him as a supporting actor on “Quantum Leap” (getting four Emmy nominations), “JAG” and “Battlestar Galactica.”
But there were two other phases – as a child star and then as an adult actor, cast by top directors.
The Cannes Film Festival twice named him best actor, for Orson Welles’ “Compulsion” (1959) and for Sidney Lumet’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1962). Later, he drew praise in two 1988 films: Three critics’ groups named him best supporting actor for Francis Coppola’s “Tucker”; four did the same for him in Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob” … which also brought him his only Academy Award nomination.
Now TCM will focus on the child-star years. The Nov. 22 line-up is:
– 6 a.m., “Anchors Aweigh” (1945); 8:30, “The Green Years” (1946); 10:45, “The Mighty McGurk” (1946).
– 12:30 p.m., “The Happy Years” (1950); 2:30, “The Secret Garden” (1946); 4:30, “Kim” (1951); 6:30, “The Boy With Green Hair” (1948).