Joe Dorsey

Acting

Joe Dorsey

Born

1932-01-15 (94)

Place of birth

Florida, USA

Known for

Acting

Credits

52 titles

Well-known and supported actor Joe Dorsey started acting in the early 70s, with The Mean Machine (1974). Though his acting career had just started, he got a great role which would also be his most remembered role as the greedy "Parks Supervisor Kittridge" in the 1976 box office hit Grizzly (1976). Dorsey got a great amount of profits with his second film. He then went on to supporting roles throughout the seventies in films like The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977), Wise Blood (1979) and The Prize Fighter (1979). His next remembered role was as "Coach Spinks" in The Great Santini (1979) and, by 1980, Dorsey was just getting better in Hopscotch (1980) and WarGames (1983). Dorsey occasionally took br…

Known for

Murder, She Wrote poster
7.5

An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases.

Murder, She Wrote

1984

Hill Street Blues poster
7.6

A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.

Hill Street Blues

1981

L.A. Law poster
7.0

L.A. Law is an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986, to May 19, 1994. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff. The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.

L.A. Law

1986

Coach poster
6.7

Hayden Fox, the curmudgeonly coach of Minnesota State University's Screaming Eagles football team, tries to navigate his way through the sports world, fatherhood and family life without dropping the ball.

Coach

1989

Highway to Heaven poster
7.4

A probationary angel is sent back to Earth to team up with an ex-cop and help people.

Highway to Heaven

1984

Remington Steele poster
7.1

Laura Holt, a licensed private detective, opens a detective agency but finds that potential clients refuse to hire a woman, however qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious male superior whom she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events that unfold in the first episode, "License to Steele," a former thief and con man, whose real name is never revealed, assumes the identity of Remington Steele. Behind the scenes, Laura remains firmly in charge.

Remington Steele

1982

Film credits

1980s · 16 titles

WarGames poster
7.1

High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his friend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.

WarGames

1983

Club Paradise poster
5.2

When Chicago firefighter Jack Moniker retires and moves to a small Caribbean island, he is befriended by the owner of a run-down resort. Together they renovate the resort and lure tourists to Club Paradise in an effort to fight off corrupt officials and businessmen who want to claim the resort as their own.

Club Paradise

1986

Real Genius poster
6.7

When teenage geniuses Mitch Taylor and Chris Knight, working on an advanced laser project, learn that the military wants to use it as a weapon, they decide to thwart the plan.

Real Genius

1985

Bat★21 poster
6.3

Lt. Col. Iceal "Ham" Hambleton is a weapons countermeasures expert and when his aircraft is shot over enemy territory the Air Force very much wants to get him back. Hambleton knows the area he's in is going to be carpet-bombed but a temporary shortage of helicopters causes a delay. Working with an Air Force reconnaissance pilot, Capt. Bartholomew Clark, he maps out an escape route.

Bat★21

1988

The Philadelphia Experiment poster
6.1

Based on an "actual event" that took place in 1943. About a US Navy Destroyer Escort that disappeared from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and sent two men 40 years into the future to 1984.

The Philadelphia Experiment

1984

Brainstorm poster
6.2

Two brilliant research scientists have invented a device capable of recording and playing back sensory experiences only to have devastating results when one of them records their own death.

Brainstorm

1983

Hopscotch poster
7.0

When CIA operative Miles Kendig deliberately lets KGB agent Yaskov get away, his boss threatens to retire him. Kendig beats him to it, however, destroying his own records and traveling to Austria where he begins work on a memoir that will expose all his former agency's covert practices. The CIA catches wind of the book and sends other agents after him, initiating a frenetic game of cat and mouse that spans the globe.

Hopscotch

1980

Frank Nitti: The Enforcer poster
5.8

Al Capone may be the most famous Chicago mobster, but his successor, Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (Anthony LaPaglia), was just as ruthless. This biopic goes to great lengths to accurately trace Nitti's rise to the top of the Windy City's underworld, amid corruption, betrayal and violence. The result is an engrossing glimpse into mob life in the early 20th century.

Frank Nitti: The Enforcer

1988

Stewardess School poster
5.0

A group of varied misfits (including a former prostitute/stripper and a bumbler who can't see more than 6 inches in front of his face) enter a school to become flight attendants. Somehow, the group makes it through to the final test: a cross-country flight.

Stewardess School

1986

Coward of the County poster
6.5

A lifelong yellow-belly who made a deathbed promise to his father to be a pacifist seeks bloody revenge on the men who gang-raped his wife.

Coward of the County

1981

Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess poster
7.0

The life and times of silverscreen goddess Rita Hayworth.

Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess

1983

The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd poster
5.3

The story of the doctor who faced charges of conspiracy after he assisted John Wilkes Booth by setting his broken leg after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd

1980

Code of Vengeance poster
7.0

A Vietnam veteran who has become a drifter helps a young, single mother avenge her brother's murder and finds himself the target of a gang of dope smugglers on the Mexican border.

Code of Vengeance

1985

Angel City poster
6.0

Jared Teeter has to work in a forced labor camp in Florida to make ends meet. "Angel City" is no place for the faint of heart.

Angel City

1980

Shadows in the Storm poster
4.6

A daydreaming businessman named Thelonius Pitt takes a vacation in the Redwood Forests of California. The morning after he arrives, he meets a beautiful, mysterious woman named Melanie. She happens to look just like the woman he keeps seeing in his dreams. Thelonius and Melanie meet each other on the shore of a nearby river late at night. Melanie's husband finds them, and attacks Thelonius. Melanie pulls out a pistol and fires 3 shots, knocking her husband's body into the icy river below. The nightmare has begun...

Shadows in the Storm

1988

Deadly Care poster
6.7

True story about a nurse's descent into the nightmarish world of substance abuse which endangers her life and the lives of her patients.

Deadly Care

1987

1970s · 12 titles

The Longest Yard poster
6.7

A football player-turned-convict organizes a team of inmates to play against a team of prison guards. His dilemma is that the warden asks him to throw the game in return for an early release, but he is also concerned about the inmates' lack of self-esteem.

The Longest Yard

1974

Grizzly poster
5.2

An eighteen-foot grizzly bear figures out that humans make for a tasty treat. As a park ranger tries rallying his men to bring about the bear's capture or destruction, his efforts are thwarted by the introduction of dozens of drunken hunters into the area.

Grizzly

1976

Norma Rae poster
7.2

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

Norma Rae

1979

The Great Santini poster
6.8

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

The Great Santini

1979

The Visitor poster
5.3

An ancient intergalactic warrior arrives on Earth to put a stop to a demonic child's plot to reproduce Satan's next generation of evil.

The Visitor

1979

Wise Blood poster
6.4

A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.

Wise Blood

1979

Project: Kill poster
5.1

A former government assassin flees a mind-control program in the Philippines, pursued by his ex-partner, the local police and Asian gangsters.

Project: Kill

1976

They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way poster
4.4

Dewey and Wallace are small-town lawmen who are ordered by the governor to go undercover as prison inmates to find out where a gang of thieves have hidden their loot. While they're undercover, however, the governor dies, and because no one else knows about the ruse Dewey and Wallace are stranded in prison.

They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way

1978

Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys poster
7.0

In 1930s Alabama, nine young black men are accused of raping two white women. The judge in the case, unlike the rest of the town, comes to believe that the boys are innocent and, against all advice from his friends and family, sets them free, which turns the entire community against him.

Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys

1976

The Prize Fighter poster
5.3

"Bags" the boxer (Tim Conway) and his manager, Shake (Don Knotts), are quite a pair: One is a dim bulb, and the other has a mean streak. Times are tough and they must save their gym, so they line up some money making fights. But when Bags and Shake discover that the bouts have been rigged, they end up with their backs to the wall and must fight back -- literally.

The Prize Fighter

1979

The Million Dollar Dixie Deliverance poster
NR

A Confederate officer kidnaps for a $1,000,000 ransom five well-to-do children from a Yankee boarding school; a wounded black Union soldier helps them escape after they perform the necessary surgery to remove the bullet from his leg. But they are captured again, and it takes a lucky Union army attack to save them.

The Million Dollar Dixie Deliverance

1978

The Lincoln Conspiracy poster
6.0

Speculates that John Wilkes Booth, murderer of Abraham Lincoln, escaped to Canada instead of being tracked down and killed soon after the assassination.

The Lincoln Conspiracy

1977

Series credits

Murder, She Wrote poster
7.5

An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases.

Murder, She Wrote

1984

Murder, She Wrote poster
7.5

An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases.

Murder, She Wrote

1984

Murder, She Wrote poster
7.5

An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases.

Murder, She Wrote

1984

Hill Street Blues poster
7.6

A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.

Hill Street Blues

1981

L.A. Law poster
7.0

L.A. Law is an American television legal drama series that ran for eight seasons on NBC from September 15, 1986, to May 19, 1994. Created by Steven Bochco and Terry Louise Fisher, it contained many of Bochco's trademark features including a large number of parallel storylines, social drama and off-the-wall humor. It reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot-topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights, homophobia, sexual harassment, AIDS, and domestic violence. The series often also reflected social tensions between the wealthy senior lawyer protagonists and their less well-paid junior staff. The show was popular with audiences and critics, and won 15 Emmy Awards throughout its run, four of which were for Outstanding Drama Series.

L.A. Law

1986

Coach poster
6.7

Hayden Fox, the curmudgeonly coach of Minnesota State University's Screaming Eagles football team, tries to navigate his way through the sports world, fatherhood and family life without dropping the ball.

Coach

1989

Highway to Heaven poster
7.4

A probationary angel is sent back to Earth to team up with an ex-cop and help people.

Highway to Heaven

1984

Highway to Heaven poster
7.4

A probationary angel is sent back to Earth to team up with an ex-cop and help people.

Highway to Heaven

1984

Remington Steele poster
7.1

Laura Holt, a licensed private detective, opens a detective agency but finds that potential clients refuse to hire a woman, however qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious male superior whom she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events that unfold in the first episode, "License to Steele," a former thief and con man, whose real name is never revealed, assumes the identity of Remington Steele. Behind the scenes, Laura remains firmly in charge.

Remington Steele

1982

Simon & Simon poster
6.7

A.J. Simon is a polished fellow with a taste for classic cars and tailored suits. Rick Simon is his less refined (but still pleasant) older brother who has a taste for cowboy boots and four-wheel drive pickups. The two of them live in San Diego, where they own a private detective agency.

Simon & Simon

1981

Simon & Simon poster
6.7

A.J. Simon is a polished fellow with a taste for classic cars and tailored suits. Rick Simon is his less refined (but still pleasant) older brother who has a taste for cowboy boots and four-wheel drive pickups. The two of them live in San Diego, where they own a private detective agency.

Simon & Simon

1981

T. J. Hooker poster
6.5

Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Hooker is a tough-as-nails veteran police officer with the LCPD who turns his back on a gold badge and goes back to patrolling the streets and training recruits. Along with his young partners in blue, Hooker take on Lake City's toughest criminals.

T. J. Hooker

1982

Hunter poster
7.1

Hunter is an American police drama television series created by Frank Lupo, and starring Fred Dryer as Sgt. Rick Hunter and Stepfanie Kramer as Sgt. Dee Dee McCall, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1991. However, Kramer left after the sixth season to pursue other acting and musical opportunities. In the seventh season, Hunter partnered with two different women officers. The titular character, Sgt. Rick Hunter, was a wily, physically imposing, and often rule-breaking homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. The show's main characters, Hunter and McCall, resolve many of their cases by shooting dead the perpetrators. The show's executive producer during the first season was Stephen J. Cannell, whose company produced the series.

Hunter

1984

Voyagers! poster
7.6

A member of a league of time travelers and a boy travel through time repairing errors in world history.

Voyagers!

1982

Roots poster
7.4

The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.

Roots

1977

Blue Thunder poster
6.9

Blue Thunder is a 1984 ABC television series based on the movie of the same title featuring the Blue Thunder helicopter. The series uses the converted Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter and large portions of stock footage from the 1983 film. A ground unit named "Rolling Thunder" backed up the helicopter in the television series. This was a large support van with a desert camouflage off-road vehicle stored inside. The television series cast includes James Farentino, Dana Carvey, and former professional American football players Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus. The series was canceled by ABC after they felt the similar Airwolf on CBS would win the ratings battle. Also, the series aired at the same time as the CBS soap opera Dallas on Friday nights, and lost. Eleven episodes were made before the series was cancelled.

Blue Thunder

1984

Cover Up poster
6.9

Cover Up is an American action/adventure television series that aired for one season on CBS from September 22, 1984 to April 6, 1985. Created by Glen A. Larson, the series stars Jennifer O'Neill, Jon-Erik Hexum, Antony Hamilton, and Richard Anderson.

Cover Up

1984

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones poster
7.3

In the 1960s, Reverend Jim Jones began as an idealist helping minorities and working against racism. After a move to San Francisco and increased power and attention, Jones became focused on his belief in nuclear holocaust, declared himself a prophet, and founded the Peoples Temple. With a loyal following of over 1,000, who donated their entire life savings to him and to join his commune, he moves them to Guyana. When possible crimes come to the attention of the authorities, and once notified that some individuals are being held against their will, an investigation begins. Rather than face the charges, Jones commits suicide, and roughly 900 of his followers do the same.

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones

1980

Capital News poster
6.5

Capital News is a short-lived American drama series that aired on ABC in 1990. Starring Lloyd Bridges and Helen Slater, Capital News was created by David Milch and Christian Williams. Capital News explores the professional and personal lives of the staff at *The Capital*, a prominent Washington, D.C., daily newspaper comparable to *The Washington Post*. The series stars Lloyd Bridges as the gruff editor-in-chief, Jo-Jo Turner. Mild-mannered metro editor Clay Gibson (Michael Woods) oversees a team of reporters that includes newcomer Anne McKenna (Helen Slater, of *Supergirl* fame) and her seasoned partner, Redmond Dunne (William Russ). Parallel to their local coverage, the national desk—led by the calculating Edison King (Mark Blum)—tackles high-stakes political stories.

Capital News

1990

The Oldest Rookie poster
7.0

Ike Porter, a middle-aged deputy chief in charge of public relations, decides to leave his desk job to become a street cop.

The Oldest Rookie

1987

Young Dan'l Boone poster
7.0

Young Dan'l Boone is a short-lived TV series broadcast on CBS for only four episodes from September 12 to October 10, 1977. The series followed Daniel Boone on his adventures before he was married. His 3 companions were Peter Dawes, a 12-year-old English boy, a runaway slave named Hawk, and a Cherokee named Tsiskwa. Meanwhile, Rebecca Bryan waits at home hoping she and Daniel would marry someday.

Young Dan'l Boone

1977