Originally published in The Kansas City Kansan newspaper on Aug. 22, 1997, this story on KCK’s own Dee Wallace (then called Dee Wallace Stone) was and is a personal plus for me. Dee and I were on Wyandotte High School’s Pantograph newspaper staff at the same time (54 years ago)—she as a junior cub reporter, and I as a senior staffer. It was a blast interviewing her. Dee has never slowed down, and has maintained an impressive list of acting credentials that continues to grow. To date, Dee has acted in 247 movies and TV shows. She has been featured on Amazon TV’s family series, “Just Add Magic,” since 2015.

By Steve Crum

Motherhood is integral to the persona and person of Dee Wallace Stone. Besides her most famous role as Drew Barrymore and Henry Thomas’ mother in the indelible E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Wallace Stone’s film and TV career is peppered with momma parts. Seven years after E.T., life copies art. Her daughter Gabrielle is born. 

Wallace Stone recalled her movie and real life roles in a phone interview last week. It was a kick talking to her, especially since I had never met her even though we had graduated a year apart (I am older) from good old Wyandotte High School. During those days, I appreciated and admired Deanna Bowers from afar. I saw her perform in plays, most notably the title role in Tammy Tell Me True (yes, the Sandra Dee part). As photographer for the school newspaper, The Pantograph, I also took pictures of her at dress rehearsal. She was a gifted gem then, and still is. 

She and Ed Asner both graduated from Wyandotte, and both represent the most world famous duo of thespians ever from KCK. Before Ms. Wallace Stone contemplates pummeling me, I add that Asner graduated from Big Red many years before she. 

Born and raised here, Wallace Stone has a collage of KCK memories. “Of course I remember Peters Drive-in,” the long time teen hangout and drive through that has been closed for several years now. “I went back every time I came to Kansas City, Kansas.” The County Club Plaza is still high on her list of places to visit whenever she returns. 

REMEMBERING KCK

More memories, and her voice has an emotional break. It is the tear in the throat sound that embellishes her mother roles. Except this time Dee is not acting. She recalls some loved ones who happen to be two of KCK’s most revered.

“Judge Bill and Donna Robinson,” she muses, “took me through a tough time when my dad died.” Incidentally, Dee’s vibrant mother, Maxine, still lives in KCK, and remarried several years ago.

Recalling the year she taught theater and English at Washington High School (also in KCK), Wallace Stone attributes the Wildcat library as the first step of a significant career leap.

“I was reading a copy of The New York Times, and saw a classified ad placed by Broadway producer Hal Prince,” she said. The show being cast was A Little Night Music. She wrote back, and included her resume. Delightfully shocking Dee, Prince responded, offering to fly her to New York for an audition. Fast forward to Broadway. Dee did not get the part after all. (“I couldn’t sing.”) She stays anyway, picking up work in commercials and industrial films. She takes singing lessons. She dances; in fact, she runs a dance school. 

Then a small TV part, and after two years in NYC, Dee has a breakthrough role (as a hooker) on Ed Asner’s great Lou Grant TV show. After a 1979 casting call to Los Angeles, the then billed Dee Wallace has a heralded performance as a prostitute in Blake Edwards’ film, 10. Remember her enticing Dudley Moore? 

A terrific turn as a reporter caught up in a werewolf community established Dee as a leading actress. The movie is Joe Dante’s 1981 horror classic, The Howling. (Fortunately, she did not appear in the five, count ‘em, inferior sequels.) 

PHONING HOME

Director Steven Spielberg takes note, and obviously sees Wallace Stone in a diverse mold, that of  “E.T.’s mother,” in 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. This was followed by work again as a mom. In fact, she portrays a super mom who protects her sickly son from a rabid St. Bernard throughout most of the intense 1983 thriller, Cujo. This is my choice for her best work so far.

The future includes a short-lived TV sitcom, Together We Stand, which suffers through the 1986-87 season. At mid-point, co-star Elliott Gould’s character is killed off, and the title changes to boost ratings. But Nothing is Easy proves prophetic. Still, Wallace Stone looks back at it wistfully. “I really loved that show. It should have done better.”

Now she would like to do another sitcom, but only if she is part of an ensemble cast. Otherwise it would take too much time away from raising her daughter.

She gets another TV series, but this time things have changed. She has married Cujo and Howling co-star Christopher Stone, and they have a baby. With the assurance that filming could be wrapped around raising Gabrielle and that a large trailer is available on the set to accommodate the entire family, the Stones contract for The New Lassie. The syndicated series lasts from 1989-92.

In the ensuing years, Dee has gotten more TV work, including several TV movies. She continues touring the country, teaching acting, camera, and editing at workshops. One is this coming Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 23-24, at Johnson County Community College. (Call 262-4500 for information. Cost is $250.) 

But everything stops two years ago. Her husband, Christopher, dies suddenly. Her career is understandably put on hold. 

Eventually, there is more TV work, and a chilling role in the much underrated Michael J. Fox starrer, The Frighteners. And this last March, she remarries. Skip Belyea, a producer- director-writer, is her partner in film workshops as well. His love and caring for both her and Gabrielle is apparent through Dee’s tone when she speaks of him. She obviously feels likewise.

Now the Dee career is barreling. She just completed a TV movie in Toronto that will be aired in November: Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story. She plays the farm wife who helped nurture Rodman early on. (Rodman is played by first time actor, Dwayne Adway.)

Then there is that yet released film, Nevada, in which she plays a lesbian. Kirstie Alley also stars.

Earlier this week, in Kansas City with her husband and daughter, Dee visited relatives and friends. She also threw out a baseball at a Royals game, and dressed up as a Chiefs cheerleader for Dick Clark at the third anniversary celebration of his American Bandstand restaurant in Overland Park. 

Dee Wallace Stone’s eventful career, by her own doing, continues to be a shared, family thing. As the screen’s premier momma, it all fits.