Dabney Coleman

Dabney Wharton Coleman (born January 3, 1932) is an American actor. He is best known for his abrasive characters and his usually present mustache.

Early life

Coleman was born in Austin, Texas, the son of Mary Wharton (née Johns) and Melvin Randolph Coleman.^[1][2] He entered the Virginia Military Institute in 1949, then studied law at the University of Texas before turning to acting.

Career

Film

Though a capable character actor with a wide range, and more than 60 movies to his credit, Coleman is usually typecast as smarmy, selfish, nervous, patronizing and self-absorbed, usually an authority figure of some sort, powerful and chauvinistic. An early example of such features a rather dapper Coleman (sans mustache) as the ethically absent Harrison Wilby in an Elvis Presley film, The Trouble with Girls.

Coleman's fate in these types of roles was cemented with roles such as that of Franklin Hart, Jr. in 1980's Nine to Five, a sexist boss whose murder is fantasized about by his office employees, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin. That role reunited him with actress Marian Mercer, with whom he also worked on the TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Other typically self-centered parts played by Coleman included the smug soap-opera director with whom Jessica Lange is involved in 1982's Tootsie and the earnest military man John McKittrick in 1983's WarGames.

In smaller, earlier appearances, he played a U.S. Olympic skiing team coach in the Robert Redford 1969 film Downhill Racer, a high-ranking superior to firefighter Steve McQueen in 1974's The Towering Inferno and a wealthy Westerner whose champion horse is entered in a long-distance race against that of Gene Hackman and others in 1975's Bite the Bullet.

Coleman was part of an all-star cast in 1981's acclaimed On Golden Pond, playing the new fiance of Jane Fonda who comes to Golden Pond to meet her parents, played by Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. He played a Hugh Hefner-ish magazine mogul in the 1987 comedy Dragnet with Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks, befuddled banker Milburn Drysdale in the 1993 theatrical version of The Beverly Hillbillies and Hanks' philandering father in You've Got Mail (1998).

Television

Back on September 16, 1963, Coleman appeared in the series premiere of an ABC medical drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point with Paul Richards and Eduard Franz. He also was seen on two other medical dramas of that period, Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare.

Coleman was so in demand as a TV guest star that he did multiple episodes of popular series: The Fugitive (four), That Girl (nine), The Outer Limits (three), Barnaby Jones (five), Twilve O'Clock High (two) and The F.B.I. (nine), by way of example. Having played a detective in a 1973 episode of Columbo, Coleman 18 years later returned to that series in a leading role as a murderer.

He appeared as Mayor Merle Jeeter in the original Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) and its spinoff of the following year, Fernwood 2 Night.

Many remember the actor for his starring roles in two TV cult classics, Buffalo Bill and The Slap Maxwell Story. Each of these series asked audiences to embrace Coleman's own charisma and comic timing as compensation for his character's lack of character, whether he be a conceited television host or a self-obsessed sportswriter.

In 1991, Coleman played public interest attorney William John Cox in the Turner Network Television dramatization of the "Holocaust Denial Case, Never Forget.

More recent television characters have a well-timed, dry wit, which seem to come to Coleman naturally. He played a more sympathetic one than usual in The Guardian and guest-starred on a 2009 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, more than 40 years since the actor's earliest work on TV.

In 1999, Coleman voice-acted in a number of episodes of the Disney Channel series Recess, playing a character named Principal Prickly.

Personal life

Coleman has been married twice. He was married to Ann Courtney Harrell from 1957 to 1959. He had three children with actress Jean Hale, to whom he was married from 1961 to 1983. He has four children: Meghan, Kelly, Randy, and Quincy.

Filmography

References

External links

• Dabney Coleman at the Internet Movie Database
• Dabney Coleman at the Internet Broadway Database
• Dabney Coleman at TV.com