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Dabney Coleman
Acting
Biography
Dabney Wharton Coleman (January 3, 1932 – May 16, 2024) was an American actor. Coleman's best known films include 9 to 5 (1980), On Golden Pond (1981), Tootsie (1982), WarGames (1983), Cloak & Dagger (1984), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), You've Got Mail (1998), Inspector Gadget (1999), Recess: School's Out (2001), Moonlight Mile (2002), and Rules Don't Apply (2016).
Coleman's television roles included the title characters of Buffalo Bill (1983–1984) and The Slap Maxwell Story (1987–1988), as well as Burton Fallin on The Guardian (2001–2004), the voice of Principal Peter Prickly on Recess (1997–2001), and Louis "The Commodore" Kaestner on Boardwalk Empire…
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Dabney Wharton Coleman (January 3, 1932 – May 16, 2024) was an American actor. Coleman's best known films include 9 to 5 (1980), On Golden Pond (1981), Tootsie (1982), WarGames (1983), Cloak & Dagger (1984), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), You've Got Mail (1998), Inspector Gadget (1999), Recess: School's Out (2001), Moonlight Mile (2002), and Rules Don't Apply (2016). Coleman's television roles included the title characters of Buffalo Bill (1983–1984) and The Slap Maxwell Story (1987–1988), as well as Burton Fallin on The Guardian (2001–2004), the voice of Principal Peter Prickly on Recess (1997–2001), and Louis "The Commodore" Kaestner on Boardwalk Empire (2010–2011). He won one Primetime Emmy Award from six nominations and one Golden Globe Award from three nominations. Coleman was a character actor with roles in well over 60 films and television programs to his credit. He trained with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City from 1958 to 1960. Coleman made his Broadway debut in the short-lived A Call on Kuprin in 1961. In a 1964 episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre titled "The Threatening Eye", Coleman played private investigator William Gunther. Two years later, he played Dr. Leon Bessemer with Bonnie Scott as his wife Judy, neighbors and friends of the protagonist in Season 1 of That Girl, episode 3, "Never Change a Diaper on Opening Night". Noted for his moustache which he grew in 1973, he appeared in the sitcom wearing horn-rimmed glasses and with no facial hair. Other early roles in his career included a U.S. Olympic skiing team coach in Downhill Racer (1969), a high-ranking fire chief in The Towering Inferno (1974), and a wealthy Westerner in Bite the Bullet (1975). He portrayed an FBI agent in Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (1975).
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BODY OF WORK
Dabney Coleman's Filmography
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Dolly Parton: An American Original – Special Edition of 20/20
as Franklin M. Hart Jr (archive footage)
Still Working 9 to 5
as Self
Rules Don't Apply
as Raymond Holliday
Char·ac·ter
as Self
Hard Four
as Spray Loomis
Domino
as Drake Bishop
Recess: All Growed Down
as Principal Prickley (voice)
Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade
as Principal Prickly (voice)
Where the Red Fern Grows
as Grandpa
Moonlight Mile
as Mike Mulcahey
The Climb
as Mack
Recess Christmas: Miracle On Third Street
as Principal Peter Prickly
The Making of Midway
as Self (archive footage)
Kiss My Act
as Henry
Recess: School's Out
as Principal Peter Prickly (voice)
How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale
as John Kennedy
Stuart Little
as Dr. Beechwood
Must Be Santa
Inspector Gadget
as Chief Quimby
Giving It Up
as Johnathan Gallant
No Poster
Taken
as Ethan Grover
You've Got Mail
as Nelson Fox
Exiled
as Lieutenant Kevin Stolper
My Date with the President's Daughter
as George Richmond
Target Earth
as Senator Ben Arnold
A Witch's Way of Love
as Joel
Devil's Food
as Seymour Kecker
In the Line of Duty: Kidnapped
as Arthur Milo
Judicial Consent
as Charles Mayron
Clifford
as Gerald Ellis
The Beverly Hillbillies
as Milburn Drysdale
Amos & Andrew
as Chief of Police Cecil Tolliver
No Poster
Lincoln
as Stephen A. Douglas (voice)
There Goes the Neighborhood
as Jeffrey Babitt
Never Forget
as William Cox
The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson
as Self
Meet the Applegates
as Aunt Bea
Short Time
as Burt Simpson
Where the Heart Is
as Stewart McBain
Maybe Baby
as Hal
Hot to Trot
as Walter Sawyer
Plaza Suite
as Jesse Kiplinger
Dragnet
as Jerry Caesar
Happy 100th Birthday, Hollywood
as Self
Sworn to Silence
as Martin Costigan
Guilty of Innocence: The Lenell Geter Story
as Ed Sigel
The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer
as Dabney Coleman
Murrow
as William Paley
The Man with One Red Shoe
as Cooper
Night of 100 Stars II
as Self
The Muppets Take Manhattan
as Martin Price
Cloak & Dagger
as Jack Flack / Hal Osborne
WarGames
as McKittrick
Tootsie
as Ron Carlisle
Young Doctors in Love
as Dr. Joseph Prang
Modern Problems
as Mark Winslow
On Golden Pond
as Bill Ray
Callie & Son
as Randall Bordeaux
No Poster
Dan August: The Jealousy Factor
as Rick Bessett
Nine to Five
as Franklin M. Hart Jr.
Melvin and Howard
as Judge Keith Hayes
How to Beat the High Cost of Living
as Jack Heintzel
Pray TV
as Marvin Fleece
Nothing Personal
as Dickerson
When She Was Bad...
as Jack Wilson
North Dallas Forty
as Emmett Hunter
More Than Friends
as Joshua 'Josh' Harrington
Maneaters Are Loose!
as McCallum
The Case of the Baltimore Girls
as George Bates
Rolling Thunder
as Maxwell
Black Fist
as Heineken
Viva Knievel!
as Ralph Thompson
Midway
as Captain Murray Arnold
Kiss Me... Kill Me
as Capt. Logan
The Other Side of the Mountain
as Dave McCoy
Bite the Bullet
as Jack Parker
Returning Home
as Al Stephenson
The Towering Inferno
as Deputy Chief #1
Bad Ronald
as Mr. Wood
The Dove
as Charles Huntley
House of Evil
Cinderella Liberty
as Executive Officer
The President's Plane Is Missing
as Sen. Bert Haines
Dying Room Only
as Bob Mitchell
Moving Target
as Morty Raskin
Savage!
as Ted Seligson
I Love My Wife
as Frank Donnelly
The Brotherhood of the Bell
as Agent Shepard
Downhill Racer
as Mayo
The Trouble with Girls
as Harrison Wilby
The Scalphunters
as Jed
This Property Is Condemned
as Salesman
The Slender Thread
as Charlie