Dabbs Greer

At 90 years old, Dabbs Greer has this physical status:

Robert William "Dabbs" Greer (April 2, 1917 – April 28, 2007) was an American actor who appeared in numerous supporting roles in film and television for more than 50 years.

Greer may be best remembered as a series regular as Coach Ossie Weiss in the sitcom Hank and as the Reverend Robert Alden in Little House on the Prairie, with hundreds of guest appearances on episodes of numerous television series.

Greer may be more well-known to younger audiences as the 108-year-old version of the character played by Tom Hanks in 1999's The Green Mile may have been more popular.

Early life

Greer was born in Fairview, Missouri, the son of Bernice Irene (née Dabbs), a speech coach, and Randall Alexander Greer, a druggist. The family migrated to Anderson, Missouri, 30 miles (48 km) southwest, not long after, Greer was an infant. He began acting in children's theater performances at the age of eight. He attended Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, where he was a member of Theta Kappa Nu.

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Career

He was an administrator and acting instructor at Pasadena's Pasadena Playhouse after moving to Pasadena, California, in 1943.

In 1938 film Jesse James, which was mainly shot in Pineville, Missouri, Robert Kennedy made his film debut as an extra. "They were paying $5 a day, a day," he told the Neosho Daily News in 2002. Local people are chastised for being extras. In those days, it was actually good money, more than we had seen in a long time." (The equivalent of $105 in 2022.)

Greer appeared in three Adventures of Superman, including the inaugural entry, "Superman on Earth," (1952), in which he was cast as the first person to be saved by Superman by Superman. In "Five Minutes to Doom" (1954), and as an eccentric millionaire in "The Superman Silver Mine" (1958), he was the main guest star.

He appeared in over a hundred television series, including "King of the Dakotas" (1955) and "Paper Gunman" of the NBC western anthology series Frontier, among hundreds of appearances. Mr. Fry, the car repair man, appeared in the 1956 film Hot Rod Girl.

In 1957, he appeared in the episode "Revelation" of the syndicated crime drama Sheriff of Cochise and as Sanders in NBC's children's western series Fury's episode "My Horse Ajax." About this time on the syndicated adventure series Whirlybirds and Rescue 8. He was also in an episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective.

Greer appeared on the syndicated western series Pony Express. He appeared on three CBS western films, including Dead or Alive, Trackdown, and Johnny Ringo. He appeared in the NBC modern western series Empire and later appeared on Stoney Burke.

Greer appeared on ABC's Tombstone Territory, the 1957 episode "Rebel Christmas" of the Tod Andrews syndicated series "The Gray Ghost," as Ed Grimes on the 1958 episode "312 Vertical" of the syndicated series State Trooper.

He appeared, too, in It!

Beyond Space (1958): The Terror from Beyond Space (1958).

The episode "Peligroso" on NBC's western series The Restless Gun, episodes of Bat Masterson, and Man Without a Gun were among the many appearances in 1959.

Greer appeared as storekeeper Mr. Jonas on the long-running television show "Gunsmoke" from 1956 to 1974. He appeared in 42 episodes of the series. He may appear as someone other than Mr. Jonas on occasion. He was Chester's uncle in one episode.

Greer appeared in CBS's anthology film "Dark Fear" in 1960. With June Allyson, Greer appeared in the episode "Dark Fear" of CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show.

He appeared in two different Twilight Zone episodes, "Hocus and Frisby" in 1962 and 1963's "Valley of the Shadow." He appeared in an ABC circus drama with Jack Palance's The Greatest Show on Earth in 1963.

In the first episode of The Fugitive ("Fear in a Desert City"), he appeared as a terrifying corrupt cop. He appeared in five more episodes, making him the most frequently cast guest actor in non-recurring roles on the show (tied with Richard Anderson).

Greer appeared in several popular shows in the 1960s, such as track coach Ossie Weiss in Hank and Sheriff Norris "Norrie" Coolidge in The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. He made eight appearances on the very popular television show The Rifleman, including both good-guy and bad-guy characters.

Greer was cast in an entirely fictional portrayal of Boston Corbett, the Union Army soldier who shot and mortally injured John Wilkes Booth, as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1962 on the ABC/WB western series Lawman.

In 1963, Greer appeared in "The Case of the Skeleton's Closet" by Perry Mason. In seven other Perry Mason episodes, he appeared in seven other Perry Mason episodes. In "The Case of the Left-Handed Liar," a murderer in three episodes ("The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor") and "The Case of the Fugitive Nurse"), he portrayed a drunkard, for example, and a murder victim in "The Case of the Fugitive Nurse."

In addition to a 1964 episode of Arrest and Trial, "The Black Flower" depicts a store owner who was injured in a robbery. He appeared on "The Children of Spider County" on The Outer Limits last year, in which he is the guard father of a country girl obsessed with the son of an extraterrestrial. Greer later played an alien himself in "The Experiment," an episode of The Invaders, in 1967.

Reverend Alden appeared in the television series Little House on the Prairie from 1974 to 1983. On the first episode of The Brady Bunch, he was often seen as a minister. As Reverend Henry Novotny in Picket Fences, he served in pastoral Rome, Wisconsin, from 1992 to 1996. In addition, Buzz Powell appeared on an episode of Charles in Charge of Buzz Powell.

He played a character addicted to a "high" produced by licking the skin secretions of psychoactive toads in an episode of L.A.'s May 9, 1991 episode "On the Toad Again." Greer appeared in the 1997 film Con Air as the old man discovered hiding under a pickup truck at "Lerner Field."

As the 108-year-old version of the character played by Tom Hanks in 1999's The Green Mile, 61 years after Greer was an extra in the 1938 film Jesse James, his last film role was a prominent role. Greer's last television appearance was in an Lizzie McGuire episode in 2003.

The bulk of Greer's almost 100 movie roles and appearances in nearly 600 television episodes of various series had been in supporting roles, but the Albany Times Union in 2000 announced that "every character actor, in their own little world, is the lead."

Greer, a remarkably generous and kind man whose real persona can be seen in his many appearances as both a good guy and a bad guy, in a interview with Greer in April 2003, said, "I was teaching an acting class at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1949." In Anthony Mann's "The Reign of Terror," I took over a gatekeeper. This was to demonstrate to the class a practical way of obtaining acting roles. It was so much fun. I was eating a chicken leg and the director and I got along so well that I found acting jobs afterward that just kept coming my way. That teaching was so lucrative that I no longer had to teach. So I gave up the one and became an actor full time."

Greer smiled in response to why he never received a nomination for his extraordinary, sensitive role in "The Green Mile" when many believed it was deserving of a best supporting actor, if not a best actor nomination. "Tom was supposed to be the older one." In the film, he was fantastic. However, I'm sure the makeup was off. So I was hired. I suppose the studio didn't want it to know as a result of someone else's conduct; it was better if all credit went to Tom as both the younger and the older characters."

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