FILE - Actor Dabney Coleman poses at his home in Brentwood, Calif., Sept. 8, 1991. Coleman, the mustachioed character actor who specialized in smarmy villains like the chauvinist boss in"9 to 5" and the nasty TV director in"Tootsie," died Thursday, May 16, 2024, his daughter, Quincy Coleman, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was 92. No other details were immediately available.
In the groundbreaking 1980 hit “9 to 5,” he was the “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss who tormented his unappreciated female underlings — Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton — until they turned the tables on him. Another was 1987′s “The Slap Maxwell Story,” in which Coleman was a failed small-town sportswriter trying to save a faltering marriage while wooing a beautiful young reporter on the side.
Dabney Coleman — his real name — was born in 1932 in Austin, Texas After two years at the Virginia Military Academy, two at the University of Texas and two in the Army, he was a 26-year-old law student when he met another Austin native, Zachry Scott, who starred in “Mildred Pierce” and other films.