James Tolkan, who played the slacker-hating Mr. Strickland in the Back to the Future films and a air group commanding officer “Stinger” Jardian in Top Gun during a 55-year film, TV and stage career, died Thursday in Saranac Lake, NY. He was 94.
The news was announced on the official Back to the Future website, which noted that he passed away peacefully but did not provide a cause.
Born on June 20, 1931, in Calumet, Michigan, Tolkan did a short stint in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War before going to acting school in New York City. He started out in local theater and eventually would appear in nine Broadway shows, notably playing salesman Dave Moss in the original cast of Glengarry Glen Ross in 1984-85.
Tolkan’s first screen credits were guest turns in such 1960s TV series as Naked City and N.Y.P.D. along with films including The Three Sisters and Stiletto. He was working regularly by the 1970s, appearing with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet’s 1973 cop drama Serpico and then playing a dual role as Napoleon and a lookalike in Allen’s 1975 Russian lit satire Love and Death. He was a coroner in 1979’s The Amityville Horror.
Tolkan also had roles in such 1980s films as Wolfen, Prince of the City, Author! Author! — again with Pacino — and WarGames before landing his signature mid-’80s roles.
He was cast in Robert Zemeckis’ wildly popular 1985 action comedy Back to the Future as Mr. Strickland, the Hill Valley High School vice principal with a noted spite for “Slackers,” as he called George McFly (Crispin Glover) and later Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox). He reprised the role for the 1989 sequel Back to the Future II and Strickland’s Wild West ancestor in Back to the Future III the following year.
Then came another role for which Tolkan would be widely recognized. He played Tom “Stinger” Jardian, Commander of the USS Enterprise Carrier Air Group, who barks at Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) early in the Tony Scott-directed blockbuster. Stinger later briefs the recently graduated Top Gun pilots on their first mission. Late in the movie, he gives Maverick his choice of duty and feigns horror with the pilot tells him he wants to be a Top Gun instructor. “God help us,” Stinger replies.
MORE TO COME…