DEAN STOCKWELL (1936 - ) Moppet to murderer to hologram in six decades

You may only know DEAN STOCKWELL as Al, the cigar chomping, dry-witted hologram in TV’s “Quantum Leap” (1989-93). But his career and range go far beyond that - and 60 years back!

Stockwell's first public appearance was in a play called THE INNOCENT VOYAGE. He was seven. His reading of his big line "I won't be damned!" caught the ear of a talent scout in the audience and soon the curley headed lad was working in movies - first as the son of Jessica Tandy and Gregory Peck in THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945), and then as Kathryn Grayson's nephew in the musical ANCHORS AWAY (1945) with Gene Kelly Frank Sinatra.

Stockwell had rare skill for seeming like the kid next door while delivering scripted lines on camera, so over the next few years he became MGM's go-to lad in almost two dozen movies, including GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENT (1947) with Gregory Peck; THE BOY WITH THE GREEN HAIR (1948) with Pat O'Brien and Robert Ryan, and THE SECRET GARDEN (1949) with Margaret O'Brien.

But as Stockwell grew, he grew disenchanted with Hollywood. Upon finishing high school, he enrolled at U-Cal Berkeley. But then he dropped out after two semesters and spent several years as a drifter. Managing to elude the draft, he worked as a spike driver on the railroad, a baker's helper, even a prune inspector.

Stockwell resurfaced in Hollywood five years later as a handsome, brooding 20-year-old and began specializing in playing introverts and sensitive souls in roles ranging from a wild, young cowboy in GUN FOR A COWARD (1957), to a murderous homosexual in COMPULSION (1958), to an aspiring artist trapped by his domineering mother in SONS AND LOVERS (1960). He topped off this phase of his career portraying the tubercular Eugene O'Neill in LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962) with Katherine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson.

And then he split the movie scene again, taking on a bohemian lifestyle in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury.

But by 1968, he was back in Hollywood again, playing the attic-dwelling mystery man in PSYCH-OUT (1968) with Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern. And in in the decades since, with only occasional absences, he has worked steadily in films and TV. He played Harry Dean Stanton's brother in PARIS, TEXAS, the deranged maniac in BLUE VELVET with Kyle MacLachlan and Dennis Hopper, the Mafia boss in MARRIED TO THE MOB with Michelle Pfeiffer, and the pushy producer in Robert Altman's THE PLAYER. TV roles in "JAG," the new "Battlestar Galactia" and the aforementioned "Quantum Leap" were a far cry from the charming ones of his pre-teen career, but watching him in any of his adult roles, you can always see little curly-headed Dean peeking through.