R.I.P. Dabney Coleman, legendary jerk of TV and film

Dabney Coleman has died. A veteran actor of stage and screen, with nearly 200 credits to his name, Coleman’s (frequently scowling, almost always mustachioed) face was a fixture of American film and TV from the 1960s forward. Renowned for his ability to play just the right kind of loathsome jerk—the kind who was frequently funny enough to make his meaner impulses really land—Coleman starred in films like WarGames, 9 To 5, Tootsie, and many more. He was no less an icon of TV, either, with a resumé that ran the gamut from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman to Yellowstone, with stops along the way for animated fare like Recess, legal dramas like The Guardian, and prestige period pieces like Boardwalk Empire. Per THR, Coleman died on Thursday. He was 92.

Born in Texas, Coleman was drafted in 1953, ultimately serving in the U.S. Army until 1955. Afterward, he moved to New York, where he began training as an actor at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he was a friend and student of Sydney Pollack, who he’d collaborate with on multiple films. (Although, in an extremely lively and detailed 2012 Random Roles interview with us, Coleman noted that he was pretty sure that his first screen acting was actually as a corpse, in an episode of United States Steel Hour.)

Coleman worked steadily, in TV, film, and on the New York stage, throughout the 1960s and ’70s, but by his own admission, only had a major turning point in 1976, when Norman Lear cast him as slimy mayor Merle Jeeter in satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Coleman called the role, a small-town cynical political monster, “a once-in-a-lifetime character… the best thing I ever did.” He ultimately played Jeeter across three TV shows (including Fernwood Tonight and Forever Fernwood) and hundreds of episodes of TV. Meanwhile, the series proved that Coleman could be a comedy star, in addition to a dramatic actor, and it’s a line he’d spend the rest of his career gleefully waltzing across.

The 1980s, then, could be comfortably said to be the peak decade of Coleman’s career: A long mutual admiration with Lily Tomlin led him to being cast opposite her, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton as the villainous boss in 9 To 5; that, in turn, led to a memorable supporting role in Fonda’s On Golden Pond. And from there, Coleman worked relentlessly through the rest of the decade, appearing in Wargames, Tootsie (directed by his old friend Pollack), and leading his own TV show, comedy series Buffalo Bill. This is the era that solidified what could be called the “Dabney Coleman type”: A pompous blowhard with just a hint of real meanness about him, always ready to be skewered by the heroes of the project. (In another amusing moment from that Random Roles interview, Coleman notes that producers on 1994 cult favorite Martin Short comedy Clifford were actually using the “Dabney Coleman type” descriptor by name during casting, causing Coleman’s friend, Charles Grodin, to all but bully them into casting the man himself.)

And the thing is, Coleman never really slowed down, at least not for the next several decades of his life. The 2000s saw him pick up a well-voiced voice role as the stick-in-the-mud principal in animated series Recess, and star in The Guardian, opposite future Mentalist star Simon Baker, where Coleman played a veteran attorney with an icy relationship with his son. (“I thought The Guardian was one of the greatest shows in the history of television,” Coleman asserted in that same interview. “I’m not kidding you. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, as good as any other 10 shows I’ve ever seen.”) Although a high profile part on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire was ultimately cut short by a bout with cancer in the 2010s, Coleman continued to do fascinating work throughout his 80s; his final role, a single-episode appearance as the father of Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone character, ended his career on a lovely, poignant note.

Coleman was married (and divorced) twice. He is survived by four children.