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