One of the greatest child actors ever

I first knew Dean Stockwell as a middle-aged character actor in the ‘80s, memorable in Blue Velvet and Married to the Mob and, of course, the TV series Quantum Leap. It was only much later that I discovered what a fine actor he was a child in the 1940s and 50s - for evidence, see Stars in My Crown, The Happy Years or the delightfully odd The Boy with Green Hair.

As a young adult he was good in Compulsion (a lesser-known but fine film based on the same murder case as Hitchcock’s Rope) and excellent among the heavyweight cast of Long Day’s Journey into Night. But it is his juvenile roles that really cement his place in film history, I would say. He had a natural charm and also an acting range rare among cinematic kids of any era.