(Jewish Group) How Dean Stockwell fought antisemitism and inspired Jewish moviegoers
Dean Stockwell, the Hollywood actor who died on Nov. 7 at age 85, is best remembered for appearances in such films as “Dune,” “Blue Velvet,” and “Married to the Mob,” in addition to the TV series “Quantum Leap” and “Battlestar Galactica.”
Yet starting as a child actor at the beginning of his lengthy career, Stockwell also incarnated onscreen some captivating roles with Jewish resonances. In the 1947 movie adaptation of “Gentleman’s Agreement” the novel by Laura Z. Hobson, Stockwell was already a vividly emotional performer.
Indeed, Stockwell’s scenes as the son of a reporter who feigns being Jewish to experience antisemitism in postwar America, hit home in a way that the otherwise stiff, wooden, and repressed adult actors do not achieve. Stockwell’s screen father was played by Gregory Peck, hampered by a limited histrionic range which the American Jewish film critic Manny Farber likened to that of “an ironing board.”
By contrast, Stockwell’s account of schoolyard taunts from classmates who suddenly think he is Jewish is heartrending. The boy’s innocent questions in the screenplay by Moss Hart, one of the few real-life Jews associated with the film, evokes the basic mystery of prejudice:
“They were playing hop, and I asked if I could play too, and the one from school said no dirty little Jew could play with them. And they all yelled those other things. I started to speak, and they all yelled that my father has a long curly beard, and they turned and ran. Why did they, Pop? Why?”
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