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Dean Stockwell (1936-2021)
Photo: Everett Collection / IMAGO
It was he who brought tears to Dennis Hopper's eyes.
In 1986, in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", Dean Stockwell made a flamboyant playback appearance in an unbuttoned ruffled shirt and, with a languid gaze, moved his lips to Roy Orbison's "Candy Colored Clown".
The psycho Frank Booth, played by Hopper, almost collapsed with emotion - only to collect himself again and set off with his walk to new bloodshed.
Violent people in emotional chaos: Dean Stockwell enriched the art house and the upscale genre cinema of the eighties with a number of such artfully broken, anachronistic hardboiled types. He himself had long been a survivor of old Hollywood and its images of men, which he took apart so courageously from then on.
Stockwell had already made his first stage appearances at the age of seven, and by the age of nine he already had a contract as a child actor with Studio MGM.
Shortly afterwards he stood in front of the camera with several of the big stars of the era.
In 1945 he starred alongside Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in »Vacation in Hollywood«, in 1947 he played a central role alongside Gregory Peck in Elia Kazan's controversial political drama »Tabu der Righte«, the first Hollywood film to highlight anti-Semitism made the United States an issue.
In 1948 he got the title role in Joseph Losey's anti-war film "The Boy with The Green Hair".
The scent of the countermovement
Several cinema and television appearances followed. In 1959, at the age of 23, Stockwell shot next to Orson Welles "The Compulsion to Evil" - for which he received the Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. The change from child star to young hero (or even anti-hero) was still slow. Probably also because Stockwell sniffed the marijuana-sweet scent of the counter-movement early on and from then on let his career options slide. In the sixties, the actor, who is considered rebellious by producers, joined a hippie commune north of Los Angeles, took part in love-ins and, according to his own statements, experimented extensively with drugs.
In 1971 he took part in the Andean meta-western "The Last Movie," directed by Dennis Hopper. After the success of "Easy Rider" Hopper had received financial charter from his producers; Stockwell stood around on set in the mountains of Peru with superstars from the time like Peter Fonda and Kris Kristofferson. It didn't really help his own career; in the seventies he appeared with very sporadic guest appearances in television crime series, "Columbo," "The Streets of San Francisco," that sort of thing.
Eventually he got a license as a real estate agent and wanted to leave Hollywood behind for good. But then his actor colleague Harry Dean Stanton brought him back into the game: In 1984 Stockwell stood with him in front of the camera for Wim Wenders "Paris, Texas" - the prelude to a series of grandiose character portraits for which he stood from the second row and from the second half of life burned into the memory of those viewers who felt just as comfortable in the art cinema as in the train station cinema.
His appearance as a gun fetishist in "Beverly Hills Cop II" (1987) or as the loveliest gang boss alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Mafiosi Bride" (1988), for which he was honored with an Oscar for best supporting actor, will not be forgotten. From 1989 to 1993 Rockwell shone alongside Scott Bakula in the series "Back to the Past" (originally "Quantum Leap"), which earned him four Emmy nominations and in 1990 the Golden Globe for the second time since 1947. The series about a time traveler was hailed by critics, but ultimately discontinued because of too bad audience ratings.
As turned off as Stockwell was in Hollywood in the sixties, so lusty and inspired did he do his rounds in the entertainment business in the later nineties and noughties.
Wherever he appeared, he often sprayed a wicked, cryptic joke, as in his legendary appearance in "Blue Velvet".
Violent people in emotional chaos, that remained his star role, even if his name was seldom emblazoned in bold letters on the movie posters.
As the industry magazine Deadline now reports, Dean Stockwell died on Sunday at the age of 85.