DABNEY COLEMAN

(3 January 1932 – 16 May 2024)

The American actor Dabney Coleman, who has died aged 92 of cardiac arrest, had a long career in films and television. Although not a villainous type in most of his comedy films, he was however often portrayed as a difficult, awkward and sometimes sexist male chauvinist character. These traits were seen to full effect in the 1980 comedy 9 to 5. As Franklin Hart Jr, he was the bane of office life for Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton who set out to get their own back on who they considered to be a lying and hypocritical bigot. That was Coleman’s part as vice president of Consolidated Companies to a T. Directed and co-written by Colin Higgins, 9 to 5 was a huge hit for the three actresses and particularly career-boosting for Dabney Coleman.

Dabney Wharton Coleman was born in Austin, Texas, the son of Mary and Melvin Coleman, a cotton grower who died when Dabney was four-years-old. Dabney attended Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas, joined the US Army in 1953 and was posted to Germany for two years. He acted at university and, after meeting the actor Zachary Scott, enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. There he met the actor-director Sydney Pollack who became a friend and mentor. Coleman made his Broadway debut in A Call on Kuprin, a short-lived play about the space race in 1961. Coleman made his TV debut in 1964 in Kraft Suspense Theatre and a year later his film debut was in The Slender Thread with Anne Bancroft and Sidney Poitier, which was also Sydney Pollack’s first film as director.

On television Coleman went on to appear in, among others, Columbo, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a satirical soap opera in which Coleman played a dodgy local mayor, and other TV shows including Buffalo Bill in which he was a Buffalo TV host, Boardwalk Empire and Yellowstone, his last TV role in 2019. In the cinema came This Property is Condemned, also directed by Pollack with Natalie Wood and Robert Redford from a story by Tennessee Williams, and another Pollack production The Scalphunters with Burt Lancaster. He worked with Elvis Presley on The Trouble with Girls, Redford again in Downhill Racer and Cinderella Liberty with James Caan. Not necessarily in major roles, Coleman did appear in some high-profile pictures such as The Towering Inferno, Midway, Viva Knievel! and North Dallas Forty. After 9 to 5 there was On Golden Pond and Tootsie with Pollack again, The Muppets Take Manhattan and The Man with One Red Shoe with Tom Hanks but for the most part the films he made were just regular genre pictures, the backbone of Hollywood’s output – Dragnet, The Beverly Hillbillies, You’ve Got Mail, Inspector Gadget and Stuart Little. His last appearance was in Warren Beatty’s Rules Don't Apply (2016).

Dabney Coleman received awards and nominations including a best actor Golden Globe for playing a sports writer in the TV show The Slap Maxwell Story, a Primetime Emmy for Sworn to Silence and a Screen Actors Guild award for Boardwalk Empire. He was also inducted into the Hollywood Hall of Fame for his television work. He was married to Ann Courtney Harrell from 1957 and then the actress Jean Hale from 1961 to 1984. They have four children, Meghan, Kelly, Randy and Quincy.

MICHAEL DARVELL