Oh sure, you think Dean Stockwell`s funny now, after he picked up an Oscar nomination for his hilarious portrayal of the gangster in last year`s
”Married to the Mob” and after almost two seasons of television`s
”Quantum Leap.” But where were you all those years before, when Stockwell was trying to break into comedy?
”It was a Catch-22 situation,” the actor said on the Los Angeles set of the TV show, which airs at 9 p.m. Wednesdays on NBC. ”You had to get a break to show people that you could do comedy, but you couldn`t get the break until you had done some comedy.
”I was always making people laugh between takes on the movies I was in, but as soon as the cameras started rolling, it was back to playing some crazed killer again. I could never show that other side of me. But now that I`m playing comedy, I feel real comfortable with it. This is my forte.”
The former child star said he finally broke through the comedy barrier by lying through his teeth. According to Stockwell, director Jonathan Demme was in the middle of casting ”Married to the Mob” when he saw a picture of Stockwell in a trade newspaper. Demme apparently liked his look for the role of Tony and met briefly with him in Los Angeles before inviting him to New York to read for the part.
”I had no intention of reading for the part,” Stockwell said, ”because I had never gotten a part that I had read for.
”So I flew out to New York, and when I sat down to breakfast with Jonathan about an hour before the reading, I confessed to him that I had gladly accepted his first-class airline ticket and his first-class hotel room, but that I had no intention of reading for him.”
Stockwell nonetheless convinced Demme that he could do comedy. He pointed to experience on the dinner theater circuit-during one of his many lean periods-as proof.
”You don`t do `Come Blow Your Horn` twice a night for three months at the Union Plaza in Las Vegas and not learn how to get laughs,” he said. ”I gave him my personal guarantee that I could do comedy, and he believed me.
”Of course, my personal guarantee at that time was worth next to nothing, but he didn`t know that.”
Stockwell, 53, was born into a family of stage performers. He made his theater debut at 7, alongside his brother Guy Stockwell. Two years later, he was signed as a contract player at MGM and began a series of films that included ”Anchors Aweigh,” ”Gentleman`s Agreement” and, in his most memorable boyhood role, ”The Boy With Green Hair.”
In that 1948 movie, the pre-teen actor played a war orphan who is ostracized by the other children after an ailment turns his hair green.
Stockwell said that early film hit close to home.
”All I ever wanted when I was a kid was to be no different than anyone else. But going to a studio school made me different and being a movie star made me much different than everyone else. All I wanted to do was play and be a kid.”
Although Stockwell acknowledges that there are good memories of those days, he said he doesn`t miss the old studio system.
”People who talk about the good old days are full of baloney,” he said. ”I always resented the fact that I wasn`t free to choose my roles, and I bitterly resented being loaned out by my studio to another It made me feel like a piece of meat, but I was 12 years old. Who was going to listen to my complaints?”
When he turned 16, he quit the business, changed his name and moved away from Hollywood. But the siren call brought him back in the late 1950s and early 1960s; then he dropped out again, this time to pursue the hippie life.
He returned to appear in small parts in even smaller movies, paying the rent with dinner-theater jobs. Finally, in the early 1980s, he thumbed his nose at the business again, and moved with his family to New Mexico. He got a real-estate license but never sold a house, working odd jobs to put food on the table.
He kept in contact with his agent, who continued to look for jobs for him. The search led to a role in the 1984 film ”Paris, Texas”-which in turn led to his celebrated role in Davaid Lynch`s disturbing ”Blue Velvet”
(1986).
That film got Stockwell noticed, and he credits it with bringing him to Demme`s attention. And ”Married to the Mob,” he said, brought him his first television series.
But ”Quantum Leap” creator-executive producer Don Bellisario said that, although he had seen the movie, there was more to Stockwell`s selection than a single film role.
”When I wrote the role of Al, I had a definite character in mind, and a number of good actors wanted that role. You wouldn`t believe some of the actors who read for the part. Dean came in and just blew us away. He was so perfect for the part, he actually was Al.”
OK, Stockwell occasionally reads for a part and gets it.
In ”Quantum Leap,” Stockwell plays a smart-aleck scientist and friend of Scott Bakula`s character, who leaps around in time, inhabiting other people`s bodies while trying to correct wrongs. Stockwell`s Al appears to Bakula`s character as a holographic observer, who feeds the time traveler tips and information to help him.
”I`m even more enthusiastic about the show now than I was last year, because I enjoy the people I`m working with and I have faith in what we`re doing,” Stockwell said. ”It`s important for television to have a show like this because it sets you to thinking.”
Last week, the show finally won its time slot, and Bellisario said NBC president Brandon Tartikoff sent him a bottle of champagne and a
congratulatory note that said: ”I am a believer.”
In a recent interview, Bakula said that acting talent isn`t the only asset Stockwell brings to the set each day.
”It`s an attitude,” the series` star said. ”He helps keep this whole business in perspective. There`s no bull with Dean; he`s real and he knows what`s going on. ”
Stockwell simply shrugs his shoulders when asked how he explains the sudden turnaround, in which a former dinner-theater hack now has a TV series, two movies in the can (one of them for Dennis Hopper, his co-star in ”Blue Velvet”) and more film offers than he can handle.
”I`m really not a philosophical guy; I just take it as it comes,” he said softly. ”But if you ask me why this has all happened to me-and it`s been one hell of a five years-I`d have to ascribe it to a change in fortunes.
”Things happen in a haphazard way without cause and effect. One minute you`re nothing, and the next minute, things are going for you. That`s the only explanation I can come up with.”
