A humble and emotional Dabney Coleman received the 2,533rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and recalled his brother and entertainer Bob Hope.
The Emmy-winning actor said it was “almost impossible to explain to anybody” what receiving a star meant.
“I’m so proud to receive this star,” Coleman said in the Thursday ceremony in front of the newly developed Eastown LA residential and shopping complex on Hollywood Hollywood Boulevard. “This is enormous.”
Coleman singled out his late brother, Randolph, and Hope for praise in his acceptance speech.
“My hero has always been and will always be my brother Randolph who happened to have been a paratrooper during (World War II),” Coleman said.
“I can’t stop thinking about Randolph on this particular day because I know how he got what I was trying to do. He encouraged me from the get go.
“I think of him and I can’t think of Randolph in this context without looking down there and seeing Bob Hope. My star’s right next to Bob Hope.
“Bob Hope in World War II was our Winston Churchill in a way. Every week he would go to a camp and do a show. My mother loved Bob Hope and every Tuesday night we would get around the radio and would listen to Bob Hope.”
Born Jan. 3, 1932, in Austin, Texas and raised in Corpus Christi, Coleman attended the Virginia Military Institute and University Of Texas School Of Law before deciding on a career in acting.
Coleman trained with Stanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre from 1958-60. His early credits included the 1969 Elvis Presley film “The Trouble with Girls” and the 1969 Robert Redford skiing film “Downhill Racer,” and appearances on television’s “Naked City,” “The Donna Reed Show” and “That Girl.”
In the 1970s Coleman appeared in such films as “The Towering Inferno,” “The Other Side of the Mountain,” “Midway” and “North Dallas Forty.”
On television during the decade, Coleman portrayed Merle Jeeter the shady father of a child preacher on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” who eventually became mayor of the fictional Fernwood, Ohio.
Coleman was established as a comic relief villain for his role as sexist boss Franklin Hart Jr. in the 1980 film comedy “Nine to Five.” His other film credits in the 1980s included “On Golden Pond,” “Tootsie,” “WarGames” and “Dragnet.”
Coleman is a six-time Emmy nominee, receiving an Emmy for his portrayal of defense attorney Martin Costigan in the 1987 ABC made-for-television movie “Sworn to Silence.”
Coleman received two outstanding lead actor in a comedy Emmy nominations for “Buffalo Bill” and one for “The Slap Maxwell Story.”
His other Emmy nominations came for portrayals of attorneys in the 1988 ABC miniseries “Baby M,” and 1991’s “Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star.”
Coleman also starred in the comedy series “Drexell’s Class” and “Madman of the People” in the 1990s. He portrayed villainous aging mobster Commodore Louis Kaestner on the first two seasons of the HBO Prohibition era drama “Boardwalk Empire.”
Coleman’s other film credits include “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “You’ve Got Mail” and “Stuart Little.”
—City News Service