Dabney Coleman

Dabney Coleman
Born	Dabney Wharton Coleman (1931-01-03) January 3, 1931 Austin, Texas, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1961–present
Spouse(s)	Jean Hale (1961-1984) (divorced) 4 children Ann Courtney Harrell (1957-1959) (divorced)

Dabney Wharton Coleman (born January 3, 1931) is an American actor.

Early life

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

Career

Film

Coleman is a character actor who has a wide range with over 60 films to his credit. Coleman is often typecast as smarmy, selfish, nervous, patronizing and self-absorbed, usually an authority figure of some sort, powerful and misogynist. An early example of such features was his portrayal of an 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 include the smug soap-opera director with whom Jessica Lange's character is involved in Tootsie (1982). He broke from this type somewhat in his portrayal of the arrogant but earnest military computer scientist John McKittrick in WarGames (1983).

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 The Towering Inferno (1974) and a wealthy Westerner whose champion horse is entered in a long-distance race against that of Gene Hackman and others in Bite the Bullet (1975).

He featured in the Oscar winning On Golden Pond (1981), playing the new fiance of Chelsea Thayer Wayne (Jane Fonda) who visits Golden Pond to meet her parents, played by Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. Coleman played a Hugh Hefner-ish magazine mogul in the comedy Dragnet (1987) with Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks, befuddled banker Milburn Drysdale in the theatrical version of The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) 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), Twelve 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 and had starring roles in three TV cult classics, Buffalo Bill, The Slap Maxwell Story and Madman of the People. 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. Since then he has played a more sympathetic character than usual in The Guardian (2001-4) and guest-starred on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2009).

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

In 2010, he has a supporting role on HBO's new series, Boardwalk Empire as Commodore Louis Kaestner.

Personal life

Coleman has been married twice. He was married to Ann Courtney Harrell from 1957 to 1959 and to actress Jean Hale from 1961 to 1984. He has four children: Meghan, Kelly, Randy, and Quincy. He resides in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles.

Filmography

• The Slender Thread (1965)
• This Property Is Condemned (1966)
• The Scalphunters (1968)
• The Trouble with Girls (1969)
• Downhill Racer (1969)
• The Mod Squad (1969)
• I Love My Wife (1970)
• The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970)
• Cinderella Liberty (1973)
• The Dove (1974)
• The Towering Inferno (1974)
• Black Fist (1975)
• Bite the Bullet (film) (1975)
• The Other Side of the Mountain (1975)
• Midway (1976)
• Viva Knievel! (1977)
• Rolling Thunder (1977)
• North Dallas Forty (1979)
• Pray TV (1980)
• Nothing Personal (1980)
• How to Beat the High Co$t of Living (1980)
• Melvin and Howard (1980)
• Nine to Five (1980)
• On Golden Pond (1981)
• Modern Problems (1981)
• Young Doctors in Love (1982)
• Tootsie (1982)
• WarGames (1983)
• Cloak & Dagger (1984)
• The Man with One Red Shoe (1985)
• Dragnet (1987)
• Sworn to Silence (TV) (1987)
• The Slap Maxwell Story (TV) (1987–1988)
• Hot to Trot (1988)
• Where the Heart Is (1990)
• Short Time (1990)
• Drexell's Class (TV) (1991)
• Meet the Applegates (1991)
• There Goes the Neighborhood (1992)
• Amos & Andrew (1993)
• The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)
• Judicial Consent (1994)
• Clifford (1994)
• Witch Way Love (1997)
• Exiled: A Law & Order Movie (1998)
• You've Got Mail (1998)
• My Date with the President's Daughter (1998)
• Taken (1999)
• Giving It Up (1999)
• Inspector Gadget (1999)
• Stuart Little (1999)
• Recess: School's Out (2001)
• The Guardian (TV) (2001)
• The Climb (2002)
• Moonlight Mile (2002)
• Where the Red Fern Grows (2003)
• Domino (2005)
• Hard Four (2007)
• Boardwalk Empire (2010)

External links

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