You may not have known his name, but there’s a good chance you knew his face, and maybe even loved to hate it at that. Dabney Coleman, a character actor known for playing abrasive, curmudgeonly, and egotistical characters, passed away at the age of 92 at his home in Santa Monica, California on May 16, 2024.
His daughter Quincy confirmed the news, saying that he “took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely.” She told EW that her father was blessed with a “curious mind, a generous heart, and a soul on fire with passion, desire, and humor that tickled the funny bone of humanity.”
“As he lived, he moved through this final act of his life with elegance, excellence and mastery.” She called her father “a teacher, a hero, and a king,” saying that he was “a gift and blessing in life and in death as his spirit will shine through his work, his loved ones and his legacy… eternally.”
His family has not indicated that Coleman was suffering from any major medical condition at the time of his death, so it seems we can chalk this one up to old age.
Coleman was an actors who practically invented his own archetype of actor, and he was a veteran of the craft at that. He worked for almost 70 years in entertainment, starting in the ’60s with popular TV shows of the time like The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and The Outer Limits. His big breakthrough role came as the misogynistic boss Franklin Hart Jr. in the 1980 Dolly Parton vehicle 9 to 5, in which a group of women plot to overthrow him.
What was really remarkable about the film was Coleman’s ability to stay toe-to-toe with comedic legend Lily Tomlin, not to mention Parton and Jane Fonda. From there, he had his own starring role in a TV show called Buffalo Bill in the 1983-84 TV season. His performance was widely praised, with The New York Times TV critic at the time saying Coleman “manages to bring an array of unexpected colors to his performance” and that he was “the kind of gifted actor who always seems to be teetering on the verge of becoming a star.”
Despite the accolades and an Emmy nomination, the show couldn’t quite get the ratings it needed to survive. He would go on to more TV shows, like The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story, Drexell’s Class and Madman of the People. While the shows never quite got traction, his performances were acerbic and eye-catching in just the right ways, and he always found a place to land for himself.
He had featured roles in classic movies like Tootsie, On Golden Pond, WarGames and You’ve Got Mail. The remake of The Beverly Hillbillies saw him reunite with Parton and Tomlin.
When asked why so many of his shows failed to achieve liftoff, he would offer up a telling if not insightful theory: “Writers write wrong for me sometimes,” he said. “They’re trying to be funny, usually. Trying to make a joke. And that’s not what I do, you know. It’s not jokes; it’s not words. It’s acting. It’s acting funny.”
He was born in Austin Texas in 1932, and his father caught pneumonia and passed away when he was just 4 years old. He graduated from the University of Texas with a business degree and was drafted into the Army in 1953 – where he served in Germany in the Special Services Division. By 1958 he made up his mind; he was going to be an actor. He took his possessions to New York City so he could learn the craft at Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse.
He graduated in 1961 and snagged a role in the Broadway production of A Call on Kuprin. It lasted only 12 shows but it gave him enough juice to keep moving forward. By 1962, he moved to California and started his career as a journeyman character actor. By 1965, he appeared in his first film: The Slender Thread. For the next decade he slogged away as a character actor, landing a big role here and there, like a small part in the 1974 hit The Towering Inferno. It wasn’t until he landed the role of Merle Jeeter, the father of a child evangelist and a Mayor, that he found his voice.
“It had a very strange, off-the-wall type of humor, the key to which was playing it straight.” It was that type of energy that guided him to “this [particular] type of character.”
He’s survived by his four children, Quincy, Meghan, Kelly and Randy; and his five grandchildren. In an interview later in life with New York magazine, he looked back on his career with joy and said that it was “fun playing those roles.”
“You get to do outlandish things; things that you want to do, probably, in real life, but you just don’t because you’re a civilized human being.”