Dabbs Greer (born Robert William Greer; April 2, 1917 – April 28, 2007) was an American character actor who performed many diverse supporting roles in film and television for over 60 years. With nearly 100 movie roles and appearances in nearly 600 television episodes of various series, Greer may be best remembered as series regular Coach Ossie Weiss in the sitcom Hank and as series regular Reverend Robert Alden in Little House on the Prairie. Greer may be better known to later audiences as the 108-year-old version of the character played by Tom Hanks in 1999’s The Green Mile. (More from Wikipedia)
I go back a long way with Under Appreciation. When watching TV as a kid, I of course paid a lot of attention to the stars, but I would also notice the character actors that showed up in small parts in a lot of the shows. One of my favorites back when was Dabbs Greer; he just seemed to show up all the time on TV, and eventually I picked up his name from the credits in one of those shows. Scanning his write-up in Wikipedia, he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone and several of the Perry Mason shows; but it was mostly Saturday morning shows where I remember seeing him.
Imagine my surprise decades later when Dabbs Greer appeared in some of the first scenes in The Green Mile; he played the Tom Hanks character in later life who was relating the story to a friend at the nursing home where he was living.
(Year 5 Review)
