Career
A notable break for Spradlin resulted from his work in television in the 1960s. Fred Roos had cast Spradlin in such television shows as I Spy (as the immediate superior of Pentagon spies Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott in the episode "Tonia") and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Spradlin portrayed Commander Maurice E. "Germany" Curts, Communications Officer, U.S. Pacific Fleet, in an uncredited role in Tora! Tora! Tora! in 1970. He was also in the late Sixties counter culture "Zabriskie Point" (1970). He worked with Jack Webb on the series Dragnet playing multiple roles from a safecracker to a low-level con man.
When Roos co-produced The Godfather Part II, he recommended Spradlin play the role of Senator Geary. Spradlin portrayed a corrupt U.S. Senator from Nevada, Pat Geary, in The Godfather, Part II. He also played a conspirator in the attempted assassination of a state governor in Nick of Time. Among his film credits are One on One (1977) (as an authoritarian basketball coach), Apocalypse Now (as the general who assigns Martin Sheen's character to the search mission). He played the head football coach B.A. Strother in North Dallas Forty (1979), General Durrell the commandant of the "Carolina Military Institute" in the 1983 movie The Lords of Discipline, and in Ed Wood and The Long Kiss Goodnight, as the President of the United States.
In 1984 Spradlin played a villainous Southern sheriff in Tank. In 1986, he starred in the miniseries Dream West. In 1988, he played Admiral Raymond A. Spruance in the miniseries War and Remembrance. In 1989, Spradlin played a small role in the film War of the Roses as a divorce lawyer, with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
Spradlin retired from acting after his last film, Dick (1999), in which he played Ben Bradlee. He reprised his role as Pat Geary in Electronic Arts' video game adaptation of The Godfather Part II in 2009.
Spradlin also played the role of Bishop Dyer in a TV adaption of the 1912 novel "Riders of the Purple Sage".
Read more about this topic: G. D. Spradlin
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