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Actor

1917-04-02 · Fairview, Missouri, USA · Male

77 series in the catalog

Robert William "Dabbs" Greer (April 2, 1917 – April 28, 2007) was an American character actor in film and television for over 60 years. Greer appeared in nearly 100 film roles and in nearly 600 television episodes of various series. He played Mr. Jonas in Gunsmoke, Coach Ossie Weiss in the sitcom Hank, and Reverend Robert Alden in Little House on the Prairie. Greer's final film role was as the 108-year-old Paul Edgecomb, the character played by Tom Hanks in 1999's The Green Mile.

Early life

Greer was born in Fairview, Missouri, the son of Bernice Irene (née Dabbs), a speech teacher, and Randall Alexander Greer, a druggist. When Greer was an infant, the family moved to the larger Anderson, Missouri, 30 miles (48 km) southwest. At the age of eight, he began acting in children's theater productions. He attended Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, where he was a member of Theta Kappa Nu.

Career

Early career (1930s and 1940s)

Greer's film debut was as an extra in the 1939 film Jesse James, which was filmed mainly around Pineville, Missouri.

After moving to Pasadena, California in 1943, he became an administrator and acting instructor at the Pasadena Playhouse.

1950s

Greer appeared in three episodes of 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. He was the major guest star as a man framed for murder in "Five Minutes to Doom" (1954) and as an eccentric millionaire in "The Superman Silver Mine" (1958).

Greer made hundreds of appearances in around 200 different television series. He played the role of the marshal in the two-part "King of the Dakotas" (1955) and appeared as Ray in "Paper Gunman" of the NBC Western anthology series Frontier. In the 1956 movie Hot Rod Girl, he played the auto-repair shop owner, Mr. Fry. In 1957, he appeared in the episode "Revenge" on the syndicated crime drama Sheriff of Cochise and as Sanders in the episode "My Horse Ajax" on NBC's children's Western series Fury. About this time, he guest-starred on the syndicated adventure series Whirlybirds and Rescue 8. He also appeared in an episode of Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Greer was cast on the syndicated Western series Pony Express and also guest-starred on three CBS Western series: Wanted: Dead or Alive, Trackdown, and Johnny Ringo. Thereafter, he appeared in the NBC Modern Western series Empire and guest-starred on Stoney Burke.

Greer appeared on ABC's Tombstone Territory (in the 1957 episode "Ambush at Gila Gulch"), and in the 1957 episode "Rebel Christmas" on the Tod Andrews syndicated series The Gray Ghost. He was then cast as Ed Grimes on the 1958 episode "312 Vertical" of the syndicated series State Trooper. He also appeared in It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). His other appearances in 1959 include the episode "Peligroso" on NBC's Western series The Restless Gun, episodes of Bat Masterson, and the syndicated Man Without a Gun. From 1956 until 1974, Greer had a recurring role as storekeeper Mr. Jonas on the long-running TV series "Gunsmoke". He appeared in 42 episodes of the series. Occasionally, he would play someone other than Mr. Jonas. In one episode, he was Chester's uncle.

1960s

In 1960, Greer appeared in the episode "Dark Fear" on the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. He was cast twice in The Twilight Zone, in the 1962 episode "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" and the 1963 episode "Valley of the Shadow". Also in 1963, he was cast in a segment on Jack Palance's ABC circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth. He then appeared as a policeman in the first episode of The Fugitive, "Fear in a Desert City". He would return for five more episodes, making him the most frequently cast guest actor of non-recurring roles on the series (tied with Richard Anderson).

The 1960s brought Greer several more recurring roles in popular series, such as track coach Ossie Weiss in Hank, and Sheriff Norris "Norrie" Coolidge in The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. He also made eight appearances on The Rifleman. In 1962, on the ABC/WB Western series Lawman, in an episode titled "The Unmasked", Greer was cast in a fictitious portrayal of Boston Corbett, the Union Army soldier who shot and mortally wounded Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

In 1969, Greer played the minister who married Carol and Mike Brady on the pilot episode of the Brady Bunch.

1970s and 1980s

Greer had a recurring role in the NBC series Little House on the Prairie from 1974 to 1983 as Reverend Alden. Often cast as a minister, he performed the marriages of Rob and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mike and Carol Brady on the first episode of The Brady Bunch.

Last years (1990s and 2000s)

From 1992 to 1996, he tended to the spiritual needs of the townsfolk in fictional Rome, Wisconsin, as Reverend Henry Novotny in Picket Fences. He also had a guest appearance on an episode of Charles in Charge in the role of Buzz Powell.

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

Greer's final feature film was a prominent role as 108-year-old Paul

Edgecomb in The Green Mile (1999) starring Tom Hanks as the younger Edgecomb. Greer's last television performance was in a 2003 episode of Lizzie McGuire.

Most of Greer's approximately 700 movie and television appearances had been in supporting roles, but he told the Albany Times Union in an interview in 2000, that "every character actor, in their little sphere, is the lead."

Death

Greer died on April 28, 2007, at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena from kidney failure and heart disease. He is interred in Peace Valley Cemetery in

McDonald County, Missouri.

Dabbs Greer at the TCM Movie Database (archived)

Dabbs Greer at Find a Grave