Of Craig T. Nelson and “Coach”

We’ve had call to mention Craig T. Nelson (b. 1944) a half dozen times or more here — I’m an unabashed Craig T. Nelson super-fan and I don’t care who knows it!

And, happily, I can open this tribute with something of a revelation. Most of us of a certain age tend to think of Nelson’s career as having come to the fore in the early ’80s. In reality, there was an earlier phase a decade previous. Nelson was an early member of The Groundlings. He was a member of a comedy team with future movie auteur Barry Levinson and Rudy De Luca, co-founder of The Comedy Store and frequent Mel Brooks collaborator. His first break was in 1970, when he wrote for and was a cast regular on The Tim Conway Comedy Hour. During this period he was also in two horror movies The Return of Count Yorga (1971) and Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973), both of which featured musical scores by Bill Marx, Harpo’s son. And, as this photo attests, he was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1973.

Then, much as he had done in high school and college, at the age of 30 he dropped out. He dropped WAY out. He moved to a cabin in the woods in ultra-rural Monterey Creek, California. Originally from Washington State, he’s pretty plainly an outdoorsy type and he relished living in this rugged way without modern conveniences. (Much like Thoreau, he fudged it, though. He didn’t live off the land, for example. He worked at a variety of jobs in local towns to keep himself clothed and fed).

After five years, he came back to L.A. and picked up his career where he had left off, with guest shots on Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman. Levinson got him a part in the Pacino picture …And Justice for All (1979), which he had co-written. Familiar stuff came quickly. In 1980 he was cast in the comedies Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, the Hunter S. Thompsonbio-pic Where the Buffalo Roam with Bill Murray, and Private Benjamin with Goldie Hawn.

Nelson is a big guy, 6’4″, physically fit, a former athlete, and good looking in that way traditionally called All-American. He’s also very bright, but great at playing dumb, so he is frequently cast as the butt of jokes as cops, military men, security guards, and the like. He’s also a very able dramatic actor, so he also plays such roles in straight dramas and action films, as well, although in comedies you get the complete bag of tricks.

In 1982, his first big splash, in the semi-classic Poltergeist. As I wrote here, it’s a guilty favorite of mine. I like the first act, but find the rest of it obnoxious. Anyway, I chose this photo because of what it depicts. JoBeth Williams (who’d been in Stir Crazy with Nelson) plays a pot-smoking liberal wife in Poltergeist, which looks ahead to her role in The Big Chill the following year. Meanwhile, Nelson is a straight-arrow Reaganite (see his reading matter, above). Nelson is (or was) a Republican in real life, a factoid which turns some people off. I think of him as a Reagan-Bush era acolyte, a small government, low taxes kind of guy, and having had moments like that myself in the past, that doesn’t bother me at all. He was widely ridiculed for some oafish comments he made on the Glenn Beck show quite a long time ago, but honestly a good sign of what someone is really like is who he gets along with, and he seems widely liked. Unlike that tiny handful of cretins (Scott Baio, Jon Voigt, James Woods) he seems not to have drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid. If I learn that he has, you know I’ll have something to say about it. (In this context though, an amusing detail of his career is that in 1991 he played Walter Winchell in The Josephine Baker Story. And if that seems like excellent casting, consider the inexplicable fact that in 1986 he was cast as Ted Kennedy in The Ted Kennedy Jr. Story).

Nelson has been a regular on five TV series: Chicago Story (1982), Call to Glory (1984-85), Coach (1989-1997), The District (2000-2004), Parenthood (2010-2015), and Young Sheldon (2017-present). He turned down the lead role (the one played by Ed O’Neill) on Modern Family (2009-2020) over the salary amount. He has also been in numerous TV mini-series and made-for TV movies over the decades. Of particular interest to this lover of disaster and animals-run-amok films are The Fire Next Time (1993), and Peter Benchley’s Creature (1998).

His presence on television has been so constant over the decades, we are apt to forget that he has been in a LOT of major big-screen movies, though usually in supporting parts or ensembles. It’s an impressive resume: Silkwood, All the Right Moves, The Osterman Weekend (all 1983), The Killing Fields (1984), Action Jackson (1988), Born on the Fourth of July, Turner and Hooch, Troop Beverly Hills (all 1989), Ghosts of Mississippi, I’m Not Rappaport (both 1996), The Devil’s Advocate, Wag the Dog (both 1997), The Incredibles (2004), The Family Stone (2005), Blades of Glory (2007), Book Club(2018), and many others, including sequels to many just mentioned. Yes, yes, it’s not all Citizen Kane, but even the dumber ones among these tended to be popular and/or entertaining.

As I wrote in my earlier post though, Coach was one of my favorite sitcoms of its day, and I thought his performance was brilliant, one of all the all-time classic sit-com lead turns. His constantly flummoxed, ineffectual, scheming, yelly Hayden Fox won him a completely deserved Emmy. Hats off to him!