Cross & Crescent

Robert William “Dabbs” Greer (Drury 1938) died April 28, 2007, in Pasadena, California, after a battle with kidney and heart disease.

He was best known as a character actor who performed many diverse supporting roles, acting in nearly 100 movies and hundreds of TV show episodes.

Greer was a very familiar face in films and especially on TV. He was a sort of “everyman” in his roles and played merchants, preachers, businessmen, and other “pillars of the community” types as well as assorted villains.

Most of his work was in supporting roles, but Greer told the Albany, New York, Times Union in 2000: “Every character actor, in their own little sphere, is the lead.”

Raised in Missouri

Born in Fairview, Missouri, Greer was the only child of a pharmacist father and a speech therapist mother.

He began acting in children’s theater productions when he was eight years old and later attended Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama.

He joined Theta Kappa Nu while at Drury in 1938, which merged with Lambda Chi Alpha in 1939.

Willing to do whatever it took to survive as an actor, Greer has been playing small-town doctors, bankers, merchants, druggists, mayors and ministers since the 1950s.

After many years of bit parts, Greer began to receive more screen time in “House of Wax” in 1953, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” in 1956, and later in “It! The Terror from Beyond Space.”

He also was recognizable to fans of “The Adventures of Superman,” as he appeared in three separate episodes on that show, including the series’ inaugural entry “Superman on Earth” in 1952.

He was the major guest star, as a man framed for capital murder in “Five Minutes to Doom” in 1954, and as an eccentric millionaire in “The Superman Silver Mine” in 1958.

Best Known Roles

After building up his resume, Greer eventually received his most notable roles as the storekeeper Mr. Jones on “Gunsmoke” from 1955 to 1960, and as Rev. Robert Alden on “Little House on the Prairie” from 1974 to 1983.

Showing no signs of slowing down, Greer continued accepting roles in such films as “Two Moon Junction” in 1988, and “Pacific Heights” in 1990.

Often cast as a minister, he performed the marriages of Rob and Laura Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and of Mike and Carol Brady on “The Brady Bunch,” and he played Rev. Henry Novotny in the hit CBS TV show “Picket Fences” in the 1990s.

In the 1958 film, “I Want to Live!,” he played the San Quentin captain who finished strapping down Barbara Graham in the gas chamber prior to her execution and was the last person to speak to her.

As a result of that role, he was cast years later in a similar role in the 1999 smash hit film “The Green Mile,” in which he played the elderly version of Tom Hanks’ Death Row Officer Paul Edgecomb.

Greer never married and had no survivors.