AllMovie

American stage and film actress Dorothy Tristan flourished in the 1970s, playing downer characters in downbeat films. Ms. Tristan's most celebrated screen assignment was as Coley, the careworn ex-girlfriend of indigent Gene Hackman, in Scarecrow. Her subsequent film appearances were along the most standardized lines of her minor role in 1986's Down and Out in Beverly Hills. An occasional screenwriter, Dorothy Tristan has made uncredited script contributions to several of the films directed by her husband John Hancock.