Stockdale grew up in Allegan, Michigan and as a child frequently visited the Old Regent Theatre to watch western films. Those days spent at the movies sparked a life-long love affair with acting, drama, and theatre.
In high school, his love of acting grew. After graduation, Stockdale left by himself on a train for New York City to attend the Feagin School of Dramatic Art that he found while flipping through the magazine Theatre Arts.
After returning from New York, Stockdale joined the Navy and eventually returned to Kalamazoo. Under the guidance of his high school drama instructor, Abbie Smith, he enrolled at Western Michigan College of Education on the GI Bill to earn a teaching certificate.
“I was given the advice to get a degree to have something to ‘fall back on,” he said. “I wouldn’t give that advice to someone today who wanted to go into theatre, because if you have something to fall back on you’re not going to have the energy to go for it.”
Stockdale credits his success to the tough education he received from professor Laura Shaw— the Shaw Theatre in the Gilmore Theatre Complex on WMU’s campus is named in her honor.
“She (Shaw) was a hard-nosed woman in class and in rehearsals, but in all of my years in education, she was the greatest teacher I ever had,” he said.
Stockdale was a part of history at WMU in 1947 when he played the male lead role in Deep are the Roots. The students had difficulty staging the production because of its message relating to racial prejudice, but the show went on and it was the first non-professional production by a racially mixed cast in the United States.
Stockdale went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina and started teaching at Purdue. During his tenure directing at the LORT Theatre at Purdue, Stockdale ran into more racial issues when he cast an actor named “Jim” in one of his shows. That was in 1967.
“When I decided to do Of Mice and Men, there was a lesser-known actor I had met named James Earl Jones who I wanted to play the role of Lennie,” said Stockdale. “He wasn’t a household name but I said ‘Jim has got to play this.’ The West Lafayette community was very conservative though, and the fact that he was black caused a lot of commotion.”
The show was a huge success, and Jones later credited his role in the play and Stockdale for giving him the energy to continue a career in acting. Two years later, he went on to win a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in The Great White Hope and in 1970 he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Stockdale spent more than 25 years at Purdue and 16 as professor and Dean of the School of Arts at SUNY-Purchase in New York. He directed more than 140 shows, and a host of Academy and Tony award winners such as Jones, Anne Revere, and Frances Farmer.
Today, he lives in Kalamazoo with his wife Robin and recently released his memoir, Stages: A Life in the Theatre. A quote by James Earl Jones graces the book’s cover— the two have remained friends ever since their time together at Purdue.
To learn more about Stages: A Life in Theatre, please follow the link below:
Amazon.com — Stages: A Life in Theatre