Harry Dean Stanton

Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017) was an American actor. In a career that spanned more than six decades, Stanton played supporting roles in films including Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Rango (2011), The Avengers (2012), and Seven Psychopaths (2012).

He had rare lead roles in Paris, Texas (1984) and in Lucky (2017).

Early life

Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, to Sheridan Harry Stanton, a tobacco farmer and barber, and Ersel (née Moberly), a cook.<ref name="nytobit"/> His parents divorced when Stanton was in high school; both later remarried.<ref name="Kentucky">Template:Cite news</ref>

Stanton had two younger brothers and a younger half-brother. His family had a musical background. Stanton attended Lafayette High School<ref name="Kentucky"/> and the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he performed at the Guignol Theatre under the direction of theater director Wallace Briggs,<ref name=KY01>Copley, Rich, "Lexington Film League has a hit in the Harry Dean Stanton Festival", Lexington Herald-Leader, May 17, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2013.</ref> and studied journalism and radio arts. "I could have been a writer," he told an interviewer for a 2011 documentary, Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland, in which he sings and plays the harmonica.<ref>Template:Cite episode</ref> "I had to decide if I wanted to be a singer or an actor. I was always singing. I thought if I could be an actor, I could do all of it." Briggs encouraged him to leave the university and become an actor. He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where his classmates included his friends Tyler MacDuff and Dana Andrews.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

During World War II, Stanton served in the United States Navy, including a stint as a cook aboard the USS LST-970, a Landing Ship, Tank, during the Battle of Okinawa.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="ewvalby"/>

Career

Stanton made his first television appearance in 1954 in Inner Sanctum. He played Stoneman in the Have Gun – Will Travel 1959 episode "Treasure Trail", credited under Dean Stanton. He made his film debut in 1957 in the Western Tomahawk Trail.<ref name="nytobit"/> He appeared (uncredited) as a complaining BAR man at the beginning of the 1959 film Pork Chop Hill starring Gregory Peck. Then in 1962, he had a very small part in How the West Was Won, portraying one of Charlie Gant's (Eli Wallach) gang. The following year he had a minor role as a poetry-reciting beatnik in The Man from the Diner's Club. Early in his career, he took the name Dean Stanton to avoid confusion with the actor Harry Stanton.<ref name="nytobit"/>

His breakthrough part<ref name=nytmag>Template:Cite news</ref> came with the lead role in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. Playwright Sam Shepard, who wrote the film's script, had spotted Stanton at a bar in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1983 while both were attending a film festival in that city. The two fell into conversation. "I was telling him I was sick of the roles I was playing," Stanton recalled in a 1986 interview. "I told him I wanted to play something of some beauty or sensitivity. I had no inkling he was considering me for the lead in his movie."<ref name=nytmag /> Not long afterward, Shepard phoned him in Los Angeles to offer Stanton the part of the protagonist, Travis,<ref name=nytmag /> "a role that called for the actor to remain largely silent ... as a lost, broken soul trying to put his life back together and reunite with his estranged family after having vanished years earlier."<ref name=tcmbio>Template:Cite web</ref>

Stanton appeared in indie and cult films such as Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Cockfighter (1974), Escape from New York (1981), Repo Man (1984), The Straight Story (1999), and Inland Empire (2006), as well as mainstream Hollywood productions, including Cool Hand Luke, (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), The Rose (1979), Private Benjamin (1980), Young Doctors in Love (1982), Christine (1983), Red Dawn (1984), One Magic Christmas (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), Down Periscope (1996), Fire Down Below (1997), The Green Mile (1999), The Man Who Cried (2000), Alpha Dog (2006), and Rango (2011). He was a favorite actor of the directors Sam Peckinpah, John Milius, David Lynch, and Monte Hellman, and was also close friends with Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson. He was best man at Nicholson's wedding in 1962.<ref name="Varietyobit">Template:Cite news</ref>

Stanton was a favorite of film critic Roger Ebert, who said that "no movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad." However, Ebert later admitted that Dream a Little Dream (1989), in which Stanton appeared, was a "clear violation" of this rule.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

He had eight appearances between 1958 and 1968 on Gunsmoke, four on the network's Rawhide, three on The Untouchables, two on Bonanza, and an episode of The Rifleman. He played the wrongly accused Lucius Brand (credited as Dean Stanton) in The Wild Wild West S3 E7 "The Night of the Hangman" (1967). He later had a cameo in Two and a Half Men (having previously appeared with Jon Cryer in Pretty in Pink and with Charlie Sheen in Red Dawn). Beginning in 2006, Stanton featured as Roman Grant, the manipulative leader/prophet of a polygamous sect on the HBO television series Big Love.<ref name="Varietyobit"/>

Stanton also occasionally toured nightclubs as a singer and guitarist, playing mostly country-inflected cover tunes.<ref name="ewvalby">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He appeared in the Dwight Yoakam music video for "Sorry You Asked",<ref name="Geek"/> portrayed a cantina owner in a Ry Cooder video for "Get Rhythm",<ref name="Geek"/> and participated in the video for Bob Dylan's "Dreamin' of You".<ref name="Geek">Template:Cite journal</ref> He worked with a number of musical artists, Dylan, Art Garfunkel, and Kris Kristofferson<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> among them, and played harmonica on The Call's 1989 album Let the Day Begin.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

File:Harry Dean Stanton signing portrait.jpg

Stanton signing autographs in 2015

In 2010, Stanton appeared in an episode of the TV series Chuck, reprising his role in the 1984 film Repo Man. In 2011, the Lexington Film League created an annual festival, the Harry Dean Stanton Fest, to honor Stanton in the city where he spent much of his adolescence.<ref name="Kentucky"/>Template:Refn In 2012, he had a brief cameo in The Avengers and a key role in the action-comedy Seven Psychopaths. He also appeared in the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film The Last Stand (2013). Stanton was the subject of a 2013 documentary, Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, directed by Sophie Huber and featuring film clips, interviews with collaborators (including Wenders, Shepard, Kris Kristofferson, and David Lynch), and Stanton's singing.

In 2017, he appeared in Twin Peaks: The Return, a continuation of David Lynch's 1990–91 television series.<ref name="nytobit"/> Stanton reprised his role as Carl Rodd from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.<ref name="nytobit"/> His last on-screen appearances are as a sheriff in Frank & Ava and a starring role as a 90-year-old man nicknamed "Lucky" and his struggles against encroaching old age in Lucky.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="nytobit"/>

Personal life and death

Stanton was never married, though he had a short relationship with actress Rebecca De Mornay in 1981–82.<ref name=latimes>Template:Cite news</ref> "I might have had two or three [kids] out of marriage," he once told the Associated Press. "But that's another story."<ref name=latimes/>

Stanton died aged 91 on September 15, 2017, from heart failure, at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.<ref>Harry Dean Stanton Knew ‘Lucky’ Would Be the Last Film He Made Before Dying, Claims Longtime Friend: ‘He Was Really Scared’</ref><ref name="nytobit">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Varietyobit"/> A small marker containing his cremated remains was established in a cemetery in Nicholasville, Kentucky.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In popular culture

Stanton was celebrated in "I Want That Man", a 1989 song recorded by Deborah Harry which begins with the line "I want to dance with Harry Dean".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In her memoir, Harry writes that Stanton heard the song and arranged to meet her at a club in London.

Stanton is mentioned in the 2013 song "Christmas in L.A." by The Killers. The song's music video begins with a dialogue between the voices of Owen Wilson and Harry Dean Stanton.<ref name="Rolling Stone">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Pop Will Eat Itself released a track titled "Harry Dean Stanton" on their album The Looks or the Lifestyle? His lead role in the film Paris, Texas, was memorialized in Hayes Carll's 2019 song "American Dream" with the lyrics, "like Harry Dean Stanton on a drive-in screen, a tumbleweed blowing through Paris, Texas, he fell down into the American dream."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Ian McNabb recorded the song "Harry Dean Stanton" on his album Utopian, released in January 2021. McNabb noted the following about the track: "I didn't know too much about him and didn't really want to because I knew I had to write a song using his name as the title, so I wrote these lyrics for and around him – I imagined what it must be like to be him – while dropping some of my own experiences into the narrative. I was lurking around Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell" and "Lenny Bruce" – I wanted that atmosphere. I've never claimed to be original."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Filmography

• Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)<ref name="bfi">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Cool Hand Luke (1967)
• Day of the Evil Gun (1968) <ref name="bfi"/>
• Kelly's Heroes (1970)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Dillinger (1973)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Where the Lilies Bloom (1974)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Godfather Part II (1974)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Farewell, My Lovely (1975)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Missouri Breaks (1976)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Straight Time (1978)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Alien (1979)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Rose (1979)
• Wise Blood (1979)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Private Benjamin (1980)
• Escape from New York (1981)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Christine (1983)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Repo Man (1984)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Paris, Texas (1984)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Red Dawn (1984)<ref name="bfi"/>
• One Magic Christmas (1985)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Pretty in Pink (1986)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Wild at Heart (1990)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Down Periscope (1996)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Fire Down Below (1997)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Green Mile (1999)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Straight Story (1999)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Man Who Cried (2000)
• The Pledge (2001)
• The Wendell Baker Story (2005)
• Alpha Dog (2006)
• Inland Empire (2006)<ref name="bfi"/>
• Rango (2011)<ref name="bfi"/>
• The Avengers (2012)<ref name="nytobit"/>
• Seven Psychopaths (2012)
• The Last Stand (2013)
• Lucky (2017)<ref name="nytobit"/>

Template:Div col end<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>

Selected television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1958	Decision	Simeon Dawson	Season 1, Episode 4 ("The Tall Man")
1960	Alfred Hitchcock Presents	Lemon	Season 5, Episode 37 ("Escape to Sonoita")
1968	The Virginian	Clint Daggert	Season 7, Episode 08 ("Ride to Misadventure")
1969	Petticoat Junction	Ringo	S 7, Ep 4: "One of Our Chickens is Missing"(credited as Dean Stanton)
1993	Hotel Room	Moe	Episode: "Tricks"
2004	Two And A Half Men	Himself	Season 2, Episode 1 ("Back Off, Mary Poppins")
2006–2010	Big Love	Roman Grant	37 episodes
2017	Twin Peaks	Carl Rodd	5 episodes

External links

• Template:Official website
• Template:IMDb name
• Template:Tcmdb name
• Template:YouTube
• Template:YouTube (from NJ.com)
• Template:Find a Grave