Spradlin also played the role of Bishop Dyer in a TV adaption of the 1912 novel "Riders of the Purple Sage".

Spradlin was born August 31, 1920, in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. His parents both worked as schoolteachers. Spradlin obtained his bachelor's degree in Education from the University of Oklahoma. He was a member of the Delta Chi Fraternity. He then served in the United States Army Air Force during World War II, where he was stationed in China.

Following World War II, Spradlin returned to the University of Oklahoma, where he completed a law degree in 1948. He first began his career as an attorney working in Venezuela and then became an independent oil Producer forming Rouge Oil Company. Before he turned to acting he was active in local politics campaigning for John F. Kennedy in 1959. He joined the Oklahoma Repertory Theatre in 1964.

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"), Mannix (in an uncredited role as Senator Sid Abernathy in the episode "Turn Every Stone"), 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 film 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 to play the role of a corrupt U.S. Senator from Nevada, Senator Pat Geary, and he also played a senator in the 1976 TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man Book II. Among his film credits are One on One (1977) (as an authoritarian basketball coach) and Apocalypse Now (as General Corman, the officer who assigns Martin Sheen's character to the search mission). He played the head football coach B.A. Strother in North Dallas Forty (1979), "Carolina Military Institute" commandant General Durrell in the 1983 movie The Lords of Discipline, a conspirator in the attempted assassination of a state governor in Nick of Time, a minister in Ed Wood, and the President of the United States in The Long Kiss Goodnight.

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 The 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 died of natural causes at his cattle ranch in San Luis Obispo, California, on July 24, 2011, at the age of 90. His first wife, Nell, with whom he had two daughters, died in 2000. He was survived by his second wife, Frances Hendrickson, whom he married in 2002.