Dabney Coleman

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).

Cast

WarGames
McKittrick
Inspector Gadget
Chief Quimby
Clifford
Gerald Ellis
The Man with One Red Shoe
Cooper
How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale
John Kennedy
Where the Red Fern Grows
Grandpa
Rolling Thunder
Maxwell
Amos & Andrew
Chief of Police Cecil Tolliver
Moonlight Mile
Mike Mulcahey
Hot to Trot
Walter Sawyer
Target Earth
Senator Ben Arnold
On Golden Pond
Bill Ray
Dan August: The Jealousy Factor
Rick Bessett
Maneaters Are Loose!
McCallum
Short Time
Burt Simpson
The Muppets Take Manhattan
Martin Price
The Scalphunters
Jed
Melvin and Howard
Judge Keith Hayes
My Date with the President's Daughter
President George Richmond
Pray TV
Marvin Fleece
You've Got Mail
Nelson Fox
Downhill Racer
Mayo
Bite the Bullet
Jack Parker
The Climb
Mack
Tootsie
Ron Carlisle
Domino
Drake Bishop
Devil's Food
Seymour Kecker
The Trouble with Girls
Harrison Wilby
A Witch's Way of Love
Joel
Modern Problems
Mark Winslow
Hard Four
Spray Loomis
This Property Is Condemned
Salesman
Giving It Up
Johnathan Gallant
Young Doctors in Love
Dr. Joseph Prang
Where the Heart Is
Stewart McBain
Callie & Son
Randall Bordeaux
Cloak & Dagger
Jack Flack / Hal Osborne
Recess: School's Out
Principal Peter Prickly (voice)
Nine to Five
Franklin M. Hart Jr.
Recess: All Growed Down
Principal Prickley (voice)
Viva Knievel!
Ralph Thompson
Bad Ronald
Mr. Wood
Cinderella Liberty
Executive Officer
The Other Side of the Mountain
Dave McCoy
Dying Room Only
Bob Mitchell
Savage
Ted Seligson
Never Forget
William Cox
Judicial Consent
Charles Mayron
The Return of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer
Dabney Coleman
Guilty of Innocence: The Lenell Geter Story
Ed Sigel
The Case of the Baltimore Girls
George Bates
Returning Home
Al Stephenson
Nothing Personal
Dickerson
Char·ac·ter
Self
I Love My Wife
Frank Donnelly
Black Fist
Heineken
The Beverly Hillbillies
Milburn Drysdale
There Goes the Neighborhood
Jeffrey Babitt
Maybe Baby
Hal
How to Beat the High Cost of Living
Jack Heintzel
North Dallas Forty
Emmett Hunter
Dragnet
Jerry Caesar
Meet the Applegates
Aunt Bea
Sworn to Silence
Martin Costigan
Exiled
Lieutenant Kevin Stolper
Night of 100 Stars II
Self
Moving Target
Unknown
The Dove
Charles Huntley
In the Line of Duty: Kidnapped
Arthur Milo
Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade
Principal Prickly (voice)
Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan
Paul Mathison
Murrow
William Paley
Rules Don't Apply
Raymond Holliday
Taken
Ethan Grover
The President's Plane Is Missing
Sen. Bert Haines
The Towering Inferno
Deputy Chief #1
The Slender Thread
Charlie
House of Evil
Unknown
Stuart Little
Dr. Beechwood
Plaza Suite
Jesse Kiplinger
Must Be Santa
Unknown
When She Was Bad...
Jack Wilson
Kiss Me... Kill Me
Capt. Logan
The Brotherhood of the Bell
Agent Shepard
Midway
Captain Murray Arnold
More Than Friends
Joshua 'Josh' Harrington
Lincoln
Stephen A. Douglas (voice)
Still Working 9 to 5
Self
Happy 100th Birthday, Hollywood
Self
The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson
Self
Kiss My Act
Henry