Dean Stockwell, Quantum Leap star, dies at 85

[TMC]

https://deadline.com/2021/11/dean-st...ar-1234870413/

Stockwell, who died of natural causes on Sunday morning, earned four Emmy nominations playing Al Calavicci, the hologram best friend of Scott Bakula's time-traveling Dr. Sam Beckett, on the 1989-1993 NBC sci-fi drama Quantum Leap. Stockwell's acting career spanned 70 years, from 1945 (when he was a child actor) until his retirement 2015. One of Stockwell's final roles was a reunion with Bakula in 2014 on NCIS: New Orleans. Stockwell also had a recurring role on JAG and starred on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, where he played John Cavil, aka Number One, a humanoid Cylon model that appears as a highly rational, eccentric man in his late-sixties. Stockwell was coming off an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for Married to the Mob when he signed on for Quantum Leap. But in a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he waved off the notion that film actors can get trapped in television. “I think it’s obviously not a concern of mine, because I chose with my own free will to do a TV series,” he explained. “And I chose to do one right at a time when I was enjoying my greatest success in films. I’m a father to my children, and that’s my greatest responsibility in life. I mean, if I can work in Los Angeles and be able to see them all the time, isn’t it to my advantage?”

[king of comedy]

It was a great show. Rest in Peace Dean.

[TMC]

Scott Bakula pays tribute to Quantum Leap co-star Dean Stockwell: "I loved him dearly and was honored to know him. He made me a better human being"

In a statement to Deadline, Bakula recalls that he and Stockwell, who died Sunday at age 85, had immediate chemistry when they first met for Quantum Leap. "I met Dean at his audition for Quantum Leap in 1988," says Bakula. "He had agreed to ‘read’ for the Network, I was already cast. We connected immediately and my career and my life were changed that day in Brandon Tartikoff’s office. How lucky were we to get him? A few months later he would be nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Married to the Mob, but he was stuck with us. Serendipity? All I know is, he never tried to get out or complain, he loved the role and the show and the rest was history. He became a dear friend and a mentor and we grew very close over the next five, very intense years." Bakula adds that "the only time he ever complained was when we called him on the golf course and told him we were ready for him to come to work! He used to announce his presence on the sound stage (if we hadn’t already caught a whiff of cigar smoke trailing in behind him), with a bellowed, 'The fun starts now!' Truer words were never spoken. I loved him dearly and was honored to know him. He made me a better human being."

[king of comedy]

There is suppose to be a Quantum Leap reboot. Will they continue with it? I know Dean will be irreplaceable but I hope they find someone who can fill his shoes with class.

[TMC]

Quantum Leap creator Donald P. Bellisario says Dean Stockwell's friends were "puzzled" he agreed to star in a TV show soon after an Oscar nomination: "Dean and I were both in our mid-fifties when I hired him to play the smart-mouthed hologram Al Calavicci on Quantum Leap," Bellisario writes for Deadline. "He had just been nominated for an Oscar for his role in Married to the Mob when our series premiered. His friends in the business were all puzzled by why, at the height of his feature career, he chose to do television. Once we started filming, I once asked him the same question. He said 'Work is work and I have a family to support.' And work he did. Along with Scott Bakula, Dean set the work ethic for the rest of the actors on the show. Television films long hours, much longer than most of the feature films Dean had worked in. Yet he never complained…and if a star like Dean doesn’t complain, who can? Dean brought a sense of fun to the set that lifted everyone’s spirits. He was constantly asked about the features he starred in and always took time to answer with stories like the one he told me: As a child actor he did a film with Errol Flynn. He recalled how they first met. He was walking toward a sound stage hand-in-hand with his mother and his teacher when Errol Flynn approached them. He said Errol ignored his mother, ignored his teacher, and stuck his hand out saying 'Hi kid. Had your first f***, yet?' Dean said from that moment on, he knew he was in for a great time. Dean was never that uncouth, but he always gave us a great time. I shall miss him."

Quantum Leap's costume designer recalls going on a shopping trip with Dean Stockwell on trendy Melrose Avenue

"To get away from the formality of my stuffy studio office, I suggested meeting Dean on Melrose Avenue, where we could glance through several of the many trendy men’s boutiques, then discuss his look over coffee," writes award-winning costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac in the Los Angeles Times. "I would also try to persuade him into a casual, informal fitting, giving me an opportunity to find out what cuts and colors he was into and what wardrobe issues I might have to deal with if it came down to buying off the rack. Plus, such a jaunt would be more entertaining than confronting him with a list of questions in my cubicle." But it turns out Stockwell wasn't interested in the clothing he found on Melrose. "At coffee, I pulled out a folder of quick sketches I had done of crazy lapels and collars for shirts, along with abstract ties with Swiss-cheese holes in them, who then confessed to being tired from house hunting — his wife had spent the night sleeping in the driveway of a place they were considering buying to check out the noise on the street — was overjoyed by the presentation," writes Dorléac. "Because he had been making movies for so long, he knew what would work and what wouldn’t on him, but he didn’t have many hard-and-fast rules: He would wear anything but fuchsia. He disliked heels on shoes despite the fact that he was rather short in stature. As for fittings, we nixed them: Dean had done so many of them in his life, he found them time-consuming and dull. He’d rather be surprised by my designs when he saw them for the first time, he said." Dorléac adds: "Throughout the five years I designed the series, Dean proved to be the most professional actor I would ever work with. I can think of only a few others who were as cooperative, kind, considerate, sincere and appreciative: Henry Fonda, Fred Astaire, Sam Shepard, Stephen Collins, Roddy McDowell and Dean’s Quantum Leap co-star, Scott Bakula, among them. Though I will always have the memory of our shopping trip on Melrose Avenue, I will miss him dearly. The screen has lost one of its very best." ALSO: It's hard not to cry reading Scott Bakula's tribute to Dean Stockwell.