Robert William "Dabbs" Greer

 Robert William "Dabbs" Greer (April 2, 1917 – April 28, 2007)

Greer performed many diverse supporting roles in film and television for over 50 years. His distinctive voice and southern accent was a good fit for shows featuring rustic characters, especially westerns. He also was portrayed on other shows as a minister, and one of his most remembered roles was as the Reverend Robert Alden in NBC's Little House on the Prairie. Earlier, Greer had a recurring role as Coach Ossie Weiss in the NBC sitcom Hank. He also performed the marriages of Rob and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mike and Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch; and from 1992 to 1996 he tended to the spiritual needs of the townfolk in fictional Rome, Wisconsin, as Reverend Henry Novotny in Picket Fences. He also had a guest appearance on an episode of Scott Baio's Charles in Charge in the role of Buzz Powell. In the May 9, 1991, episode of L.A. Law titled "On the Toad Again," he 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 the old man discovered hiding under a pickup truck at "Lerner Field" by Nicolas Cage's character Cameron Poe.

Greer's last feature film was a prominent role as the 108-year-old version of the character played by Tom Hanks in 1999's The Green Mile. Greer, a resident of Pasadena, California, since 1943, died in 2007 at Pasadena's Huntington Hospital after a battle with renal failure and heart disease, age 90. He is buried at Peace Valley Cemetery in the town of Anderson in his native Missouri.