NEW YORK — Dabney Coleman, the mustachioed actor who specialized in smarmy villains like the chauvinistic boss on “9 to 5” and the nasty TV director on “Tootsie,” has died. He was 92 years old.
Coleman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, his daughter, Quincy Coleman, said in a statement to The Associated Press. She said he “took his last earthly breath in a peaceful and exquisite manner.”
“The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really – in a singular and unique way – an archetype as a character actor. He was so good at what he did that it’s hard to imagine the movies and television of the last 40 years without him,” wrote Ben Stiller in X.
For two decades, Coleman worked in films and TV shows as a talented but largely unnoticed artist. That changed abruptly in 1976, when he was cast as the incorrigibly corrupt mayor of the village of Fernwood in “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” a satirical soap opera so campy that no network would play it.
Producer Norman Lear was finally able to distribute the show, which starred Louise Lasser in the title role. It quickly became a cult favorite. Coleman’s character, Mayor Merle Jeeter, was especially popular and his masterful, comedic delivery did not go unnoticed by movie and network executives.
Standing six feet tall with a thick black mustache, Coleman made his mark in several popular films, including as a stressed-out computer scientist in “War Games,” Tom Hanks’ father in “You’ve Got Mail” and a fire. combat officer in “The Towering Inferno”.
He won a Golden Globe for “The Slap Maxwell Story” and an Emmy for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 legal drama “Sworn to Silence.” Some of his recent credits include “Ray Donovan” and a recurring role on “Boardwalk Empire,” for which he won two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
In the 1980 breakthrough hit “9 to 5,” he was the “sexist, selfish, lying and hypocritical” boss who tormented his unappreciated underlings — Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton — until they turned the tables on him.
In 1981, he was Fonda’s affectionate, mild-mannered boyfriend, who asks her father (played by her real-life father, Henry Fonda) if he can sleep with her during a visit to her parents’ vacation home in ” On Golden Pond”. “
Alongside Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” he was the obnoxious director of a daytime soap opera that Hoffman’s character joins by pretending to be a woman. Among Coleman’s other films were “North Dallas Forty,” “Cloak and Dagger,” “Dragnet,” “Meet the Applegates,” “Inspector Gadget” and “Stuart Little.” He reunited with Hoffman as a land developer in Brad Silberling’s “Moonlight Mile” with Jake Gyllenhaal.
Coleman’s unlikeable characters didn’t translate as well to television, where he starred in a few network comedies. While some became cult favorites, only one lasted more than two seasons, and some critics questioned whether a series starring a main character with absolutely no redeeming qualities could appeal to a mass audience.
“Buffalo Bill” (1983-84) was a good example. It starred Coleman as “Buffalo Bill” Bittinger, the smarmy, arrogant, dim-witted daytime talk show host who, unhappy about being relegated to the small-market Buffalo, New York, takes it out on everyone around him. Although well written and featuring an excellent cast, it only lasted two seasons.
Another was 1987’s “The Slap Maxwell Story,” in which Coleman was a failed small-town sportswriter trying to salvage a faltering marriage while wooing a beautiful young reporter.
Other failed attempts to find a mass TV audience included “Apple Pie”, “Drexell’s Class” (in which he played an in-house trader) and “Madman of the People”, another newspaper show in which this time he came into conflict with his younger boss. who was also his daughter.
He fared better in a supporting role in “The Guardian” (2001-2004), in which he played the father of a corrupt lawyer. And he liked the voice of Principal Prickly on the Disney animated series “Recess” from 1997-2003.
Underneath all that bravery was a reserved man. Coleman insisted he was very shy. “I’ve been shy all my life. Maybe it’s because I was the last of four children, all very handsome, including a brother who was the handsome Tyrone Power. Maybe it’s because my father died when I was 4,” he told the Associated Press in 1984. “I was extremely small, just a little kid who was there, the kid who didn’t make trouble. I was drawn to fantasy and created games for myself.”
As he grew older, he also began to make his mark on pompous authority figures, most notably in 1998’s “My Date With the President’s Daughter,” in which he was not only a selfish, self-centered President of the United States but also a ignorant. father of a teenager.
Dabney Coleman — his real name — was born in 1932 in Austin, Texas. After two years at the Virginia Military Academy, two at the University of Texas and two in the Army, he was a 26-year-old law student when he met another Austin native, Zachry Scott, who starred in “Mildred Pierce” and other films.
“He was the most dynamic person I’ve ever met. He convinced me that I should become an actor and I literally left the next day to study in New York. He didn’t think that was very wise, but I made my decision,” Coleman told the AP in 1984.
Early credits included TV shows such as “Ben Casey”, “Dr Kildare”, “The Outer Limits”, “Bonanza”, “The Mod Squad” and the film “The Towering Inferno”. He appeared on Broadway in 1961 in “A Call on Kuprin.” He played Kevin Costner’s father in “Yellowstone.”
Twice-divorced, Coleman is survived by four children, Meghan, Kelly, Randy and Quincy, and grandchildren Hale and Gabe Torrance, Luie Freundl, and Kai and Coleman Biancaniello.
“My father built his time here on earth with a curious mind, a generous heart, and a soul burning with passion, desire, and humor that tickled the bones of humanity,” Quincy Coleman wrote in his honor.
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Mark Kennedy can be contacted at
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