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Dabney Coleman, “9 to 5” and “Tootsie” actor, dies at 92

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Dabney 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,” has died. He was 92.

Coleman died Thursday, his daughter, Quincy Coleman, told The Hollywood Reporter. No other details were immediately available.

“The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really – in a uniquely singular way – an archetype as a character actor. He was so good at what he did it’s hard to imagine movies and television of the last 40 years without him,” Ben Stiller wrote on X.

For two decades, Coleman labored in movies and TV shows as a talented but largely unnoticed performer. That changed abruptly in 1976 when he was cast as the incorrigibly corrupt mayor of the hamlet of Fernwood in “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” a satirical soap opera that was so over the top no network would touch it.

Producer Norman Lear finally managed to syndicate the show, which starred Louise Lasser in the title role. It quickly became a cult favorite. Coleman’s character, Mayor Merle Jeeter, was especially popular, and his masterful, comic deadpan delivery did not go overlooked by film and network executives.

A six-footer with an ample black mustache, Coleman went on to make his mark in numerous popular films, including as a stressed out computer scientist in “War Games,” Tom Hanks’ father in “You’ve Got Mail,” and a fire fighting official in “The Towering Inferno.”

Dabney Coleman Honored With Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame
Actor Dabney Coleman is Honored with a Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame on November 6, 2014 in Hollywood, California.

Earl Gibson III via Wireimage


He won a Golden Globe for “The Slap Maxwell Story” and an Emmy Award for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 small screen legal drama “Sworn to Silence.” Some of his recent credits include “Ray Donovan” and a recurring role on “Boardwalk Empire,” for which he won two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

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.

In 1981, he was Fonda’s caring, well-mannered boyfriend, who asks her father (played by her real-life father, Henry Fonda) if he can sleep with her during a visit to her parents’ vacation home in “On Golden Pond.”

Opposite Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” he was the obnoxious director of a daytime soap opera that Hoffman’s character joins by pretending to be a woman. Among Coleman’s other films were “North Dallas Forty,” “Cloak and Dagger,” “Dragnet,” “Meet the Applegates,” “Inspector Gadget” and “Stuart Little.” He reunited with Hoffman as a land developer in Brad Silberling’s “Moonlight Mile” with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Buffalo Bill
The cast of the series “Buffalo Bill,” which aired in 1983-84. (Clockwise from left) Joanna Cassidy as Jo Jo White, John Fiedler as Woody, Meshach Taylor as Tony, Charles Robinson as Newdell, Max Wright as Karl Shub, Geena Davis as Wendy Killian, Dabney Coleman as Bill Bittinger. 

Herb Ball via Getty Images


Coleman’s obnoxious characters didn’t translate quite as well on television, where he starred in a handful of network comedies. Although some became cult favorites, only one lasted longer than two seasons, and some critics questioned whether a series starring a lead character with absolutely no redeeming qualities could attract a mass audience.

“Buffalo Bill” (1983-84) was a good example. It starred Coleman as “Buffalo Bill” Bittinger, the smarmy, arrogant, dimwitted daytime talk show host who, unhappy at being relegated to the small-time market of Buffalo, New York, takes it out on everyone around him. Although smartly written and featuring a fine ensemble cast, it lasted only two seasons.

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.

Other failed attempts to find a mass TV audience included “Apple Pie,” “Drexell’s Class” (in which he played an inside trader) and “Madman of the People,” another newspaper show in which he clashed this time with his younger boss, who was also his daughter.

He fared better in a co-starring role in “The Guardian” (2001-2004), which had him playing the father of a crooked lawyer. And he enjoyed the voice role as Principal Prickly on the Disney animated series “Recess” from 1997-2003.

The 4th Annual Family Television Awards - Show
Dabney Coleman accepts for an award for a new series, “The Guardian”

Michael Caulfield Archive via Getty Images


Underneath all that bravura was a reserved man. Coleman insisted he was really quite shy. 

“I’ve been shy all my life. Maybe it stems from being the last of four children, all of them very handsome, including a brother who was Tyrone Power-handsome. Maybe it’s because my father died when I was 4,” he told The Associated Press in 1984. “I was extremely small, just a little guy who was there, the kid who created no trouble. I was attracted to fantasy, and I created games for myself.”

As he aged, he also began to put his mark on pompous authority figures, notably in 1998’s “My Date With the President’s Daughter,” in which he was not only an egotistical, self-absorbed president of the United States, but also a clueless father to a teenager girl.

Jack Gilford, Rue McClanahan, Dabney Coleman Promotional Photo For 'Apple Pie'
 (L-R) Jack Gilford, Rue McClanahan, Dabney Coleman promotional photo for the tv series ‘Apple Pie’.

Jim Britt /Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images


Dabney Coleman 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.

“He was the most dynamic person I’ve ever met. He convinced me I should become an actor, and I literally left the next day to study in New York. He didn’t think that was too wise, but I made my decision,” Coleman told The AP in 1984.

Early credits included such TV shows as “Ben Casey,” “Dr Kildare,” “The Outer Limits,” “Bonanza,” “The Mod Squad” and the film “The Towering Inferno.” He appeared on Broadway in 1961 in “A Call on Kuprin.” He played Kevin Costner’s father on “Yellowstone.”

Twice divorced, Coleman is survived by four children, Meghan, Kelly, Randy and Quincy.



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2 parents, 3 young children found dead inside Utah home; teen hospitalized with gunshot wound

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Five family members including three children were found dead in a home in Utah on Tuesday, and another, age 17, was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound, police said.

The dead were two adults, an 11-year-old boy, and two girls ages 9 and 2, according to Roxeanne Vainuku, a spokesperson for the West Valley City Police Department. It was not immediately clear how they died.

They were found in the house in West Valley City, about 9 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The teen was discovered in the garage.

“Absolutely horrific. This is something that certainly will weigh heavily on investigators in this case,” Vainuku said at a nighttime news conference.

Authorities do not believe there is a suspect on the loose, and the shooting is something that was “isolated to this home,” she added

Because the 17-year-old “is injured and he’s in the hospital, there are some challenges in communicating with him and finding out more information,” Vainuku said.

“In any case where people have died, loved ones have been lost, we want to make sure that we do the most absolute thorough job possible so that we can bring justice to the victims,” Vainuku said, according to CBS affiliate KUTV.

A relative alerted police Monday after unsuccessfully trying to reach the 38-year-old woman who lived in the home, authorities said. Officers went to the house, but no one answered.

They came back on Tuesday afternoon after the same relative reported finding the 17-year-old in the garage.

Police are investigating inside the home and have also been talking with neighbors and looking for evidence from things like doorbell cameras, Vainuku said.

“Officers also have canvassed the neighborhood gathering information and any video evidence,” police said in a statement.

CBS affiliate KUTV reported that some neighbors said the family had been living in that house for three or four years.





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Coal use hitting all-time high in 2024, which is on track to be hottest year ever, report says

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World coal use is set to reach an all-time high in 2024, the International Energy Agency said Wednesday, in a year all but certain to be the hottest in recorded history.

Despite calls to halt humanity’s burning of the filthiest fossil fuel driving climate change, the energy watchdog expects global demand for coal to hit record highs for the third year in a row.

Scientists have warned that planet-warming greenhouse gases will have to be drastically slashed to limit global heating to avoid catastrophic impacts on the Earth and humanity.

Earlier in December, the European Union’s climate monitor Copernicus said 2024 was “effectively certain” to be the hottest on record — eclipsing the mark set just last year.

Published on Wednesday, the IEA’s “Coal 2024” report does, however, predict the world will hit peak coal use in 2027 after topping 8.77 billion tons this year.

But that would be dependent on China, which for the past quarter-century has consumed 30 percent more coal than the rest of the world’s countries combined, the IEA said.

China’s demand for electricity was the most significant driving force behind the increase, with more than a third of coal burnt worldwide carbonized in that country’s power plants.

Though Beijing has sought to diversify its electricity sources, including a massive expansion of solar and wind power, the IEA said China’s coal demand in 2024 will still hit 4.9 billion tones — itself another record.

Increasing coal demand in China, as well as in emerging economies such as India and Indonesia, made up for a continued decline in advanced economies.

However that decline has slowed in the European Union and the United States. Coal use there is set to decline by 12 and five percent respectively, compared with 23 and 17 percent in 2023.

With the imminent return to the White House of Donald Trump — who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” — many scientists fear that a second Trump presidency would water down the climate commitments of the world’s largest economy.

Coal mining also hit unprecedented levels by topping nine billion tons in output for the first time, the IEA said, with top producers China, India and Indonesia all posting new production records.

The energy watchdog warned that the explosion in power-hungry data centers powering the emergence of artificial intelligence was likewise likely to drive up demand for power generation, with that trend underpinning electricity demand in coal-guzzling China.

The 2024 report reverses the IEA’s prediction last year that coal use would begin declining after peaking in 2023.

At the annual U.N. climate change forum in Dubai last year, nations vowed to transition away from fossil fuels.

But its follow-up this year ended in acrimony, with experts warning that the failure to double down on that landmark pledge at COP29 in Azerbaijan risked jeopardizing efforts to fight climate change.

Set up in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, the IEA presents itself as “the world’s leading energy authority.”



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Tennessee DA accused of firing multiple times at fugitive, hitting home with woman and her 3 children inside

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A district attorney in Tennessee is facing a reckless endangerment charge after shooting at a fugitive several times and hitting a home that had a woman and her three children inside.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced the grand jury charge Monday against District Attorney Chris Stanford. His district covers Van Buren and Warren counties.

The indictment says that as the incident unfolded in Smithville on Nov. 21, a bullet Stanford shot from his handgun went through a front porch patio chair, through an exterior wall and into the living room wall of the home. The woman and children weren’t hurt.

Smithville is about 60 miles southeast of Nashville.

The indictment says that Stanford fired the shot “unlawfully, intentionally and recklessly.” There was no immediate threat to him or others, he wasn’t aiming the handgun, and “just held it out and shot” without using the gun’s sights, the indictment adds.

Following his indictment, Stanford surrendered at the DeKalb County Jail and was released after posting a $10,000 bond, TBI said. A message left with Stanton’s office was not immediately returned Tuesday.

The Warren County Sheriff’s Office described the circumstances leading to the incident last month. In a social media post, it said authorities were pursuing suspects after finding three dead bodies at a house and at an adjacent building.

The suspects were sighted in DeKalb County, the sheriff’s office said. One of them was taken into custody without incident. Stanford and other law enforcement officials chased the other suspect, who was a passenger in a car, the office said.

While trying to help the suspect flee, the driver struck a homeland security officer with the car, the sheriff’s office said.

In a statement last month to CBS affiliate WTVF-TV, Stanford said he fired shots in response to the homeland security agent being hit. No one was shot when Stanford fired his gun. The homeland security officer was injured and taken to the hospital, according to a social media post by District Attorney Bryant Dunaway.

“The vehicle then drove toward me and others, accelerating quickly. I fired my service weapon in defense of myself and others at the scene. Based upon my training and the circumstances that presented themselves, I believe my actions were necessary and justified,” Stanford said.

Stanford also told the news station he has a state law enforcement certification to carry his weapon at all times.

The two suspects in the three deaths were taken into custody and charged with criminal homicide, while the driver, also taken into custody, faces felony evading arrest and aggravated assault charged, according to the sheriff’s office.

Stanford will make an appearance in court on Jan. 7, WTVF reported. Since he showed up at the scene and fired his weapon, he is now a witness and cannot prosecute the triple murder in his own county, the station reported.





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