April 2 Birthday Wishes

Buddy Ebsen [1908 - 2003]

Dabs Greer [1917 - 2007]

Gloria Henry [1923 - ]

Howdy Manco!!

Buddy Ebsen performed in show business for over 70 years!! He was originally a "hoofer" in Vaudeville with his sister, before he moved on to film. He appeared as a song and dance man in 2 films with Shirley Temple, Born To Dance and Captain January. If you don't think this guy could dance, check either of these 2 films out!! He eventually moved on to play Fess Parker's sidekick in the Davy Crockett films. In the 50's, Ebsen found his calling and took on the part of Jed, in the long running hit t.v. series, The Beverly Hillbillies. This series ran for more years than I can count and when it was finally cancelled, he took on the part of Barnaby Jones in the detective series of the same name. He even appeared in the movie, The Beverly Hillbillies, which starred Jim Varney as Jed.

Anybody that doesn't know who Dabbs Greer was, must have been on Mars for the past 60 years!! This guy's career lasted almost as long as Buddy Ebsens. He appeared back in the 50's on the ole Sheriff Of Cochise t.v. series. He then moved on to a regular part as Jonas, the storekeeper on Gunsmoke and then on to the role of Reverend Alden on Little House On The Prairie. He has appeared on almost every t.v. series, that has ever been on t.v. in the last 50 years. He's played bank clerks, storekeepers, nosey neighbors, farmers and just about any supporting role ever written. My most recent memory of him, was as the older Tom Hanks, in the movie, The Green Mile. They just don't make'um like Dabbs Greer anymore.

Gloria Henry was a Dale Evans look a like, that began her career back in 1947 in several B westerns. She also appeared in supporting roles in the Perry Mason and My Little Margie t.v. series. She will be best remembered as Alice Mitchell, the mother of Dennis on the 50's t.v. series, Dennis The Menace. She retired from acting in 1981.

Ed

Dabbs Greer's first movie role was when he played three bits in "Jesse James" with Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda & Randolph Scott. They filmed in Missouri at his hometown and he got in the film. When he came west to Hollywood he began work at Pasadena Playhouse where he taught and directed, and landed his first TV role in 1944 in a live production of one of Ibsen's stories, and then worked in a Fireside Theater which he said was his first film television show. His first motion picture role (outside of the bits in Jesse James) was 1949's "The Black Book" (maybe sometimes shown under the title of "The Reign of Terror." Yes, he had a long career....can tell y'all sometime what he had to say about working on Gunsmoke and Little House on the Prairie, both shows playing a re-ocurring character many times. Tom.

Here's a couple more:


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Academy award winner Linda Hunt, who played Stella in Silverado (1945-)


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Pamela Reed, who played Belle Starr in The Long Riders (1949-)

Howdy Tinhorn!!

Pard, Linda Hunt made her film debut in Popeye and her next role won her the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actress for Billy Kwan in The Year Of Living Dangerously. She is the first actress to win an Oscar for portraying a member of the opposite sex. She is a natural for westerns, even though I believe Silverado is her only western role to date. She's a cutie, all 4 feet 9 inches of her!!

Like you, I remember Pamela Reed best from her role as Belle Star in The Longriders, with David and Keith Carradine, and the Keach brothers, but she has also appeared in The Right Stuff, The Clan Of The Cave Bear and a funny little comedy with Kurt Russell and Robin Williams titled The Best Of Times. She was also a regular on the t.v. series Jericho a couple of years ago.

Tom, if you ever git the time to sit down and type out what Dabbs Greer had to say about working on Gunsmoke and Little House On The Prairie, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it!!!!!!!!!!

Ed

Sorry, I was mistaken, Dabbs didn’t say much about Little House on the Prairie except maybe that sort of typecast him as a minister, but never before had he been typecast and played a large range of characters, so I will put here what he said about Jesse James and about Gunsmoke and a bit of this and that about dislocating his shoulder and about not being much of a horseman..

20th Century Fox came on location in 1938 to within eight miles of Dabbs’ hometown to film Jesse James with Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda. “I had three different parts in it while they were there,” Dabbs told us. “One part was called ‘well dressed man at the bar,’ another was a player in the Confederate band when the train’s coming into Liberty, and the other was on the street when the heavies are riding through. I was really what you’d call a glorified extra, and had one line. The reason I got in it was that they wanted all the local people to be extras. McDonald County was a very rural county and practically everybody turned out to be in the picture for them. We were paid two and a half dollars a day plus a box lunch. Pineville Square became Liberty. They had just cemented the square, so they covered it all with dirt and built the facades of the buildings they used, and some of those are still standing. It was interesting to watch because it was quite an influx of talent they brought in, not only Fonda and Power, but also Randolph Scott, Nancy Kelly, Henry Hull and Brian Donlevy. It was incredible. People found out where it would be shooting and there would be as many as six or seven thousand people on the roads around there to watch them shoot.”

Dabbs’ television work included Gunsmoke in which he was the merchant Wilbur Jonas in forty-one episodes; but is probably best remembered by many as Reverend Robert Alden for nine years on Little House on the Prairie.

In reflecting on his working on Gunsmoke, Dabbs told us, “I didn’t go into Gunsmoke until the beginning of the second year, and was on there for eight seasons. My agent tried to get them to raise my salary and they wouldn’t do it, so he said I wouldn’t be working for them anymore. I liked those people very much, and for the most part the scripts were tried and true because they had done it on radio for years before starting it on television. And it was fun, except now that I look back on it, from my point of view that company was not as close as others I had worked on. I think that Jim, Mandy, Dennis, and Milburn were kind of buddy buddy, but they were just kind of their own little world. You went in and you were respected and treated kindly, but it was like I would imagine a stepchild might be. You were tolerated rather than loved. The character was fun. We got into one situation there that disillusioned me, though. Milburn was holding out for something contractually, and they -- I don’t know if this was Norman MacDonnell, who was the producer then, or if it was CBS -- were trying to hold off. So for about six shows they gave me Milburn’s lines to do with Dennis Weaver. They didn’t change a word. I thought if these characters were that interchangeable then this was not very good writing. Luckily there was running through Milburn’s character and mine a kind of annoyance with Dennis’
simplicity, so I could play that part of Milburn’s lines. Of course I didn’t do
any scenes where he was being a doctor, but just the little funny scenes that
would have been between Doc and Chester. As a result, I have watched very carefully since then how well the writer captures the rhythm of the performer.

Dabbs mentioned that he enjoyed the character parts he played and feels fortunate to have not been a big leading man. “I would never want that business of having to look in top form all of the time,” he said. “Then there is the lack of privacy that the stars must endure. As far as people not knowing my name, it doesn’t really bother me. I am perfectly free to go to the market and I can walk down the street and will not be besieged.”

Having made so many westerns and other action films during his career, we questioned Dabbs if he ever faced the possibility of being injured. “I used to all the time,” he responded. “But now that I’m older I don’t get into those kind of action sequences. I had a bad shoulder dislocation in a prison picture up at Folsom and they wanted to put me in the prison hospital overnight. I said no, but the man who was in charge of the first aid was so kind. I didn’t know who he was but I said he was as gentle and tender in trying to keep me comfortable as when I was a child and my mother would look after me. They said, ‘Do you know who that was? He was an axe murderer from San Francisco that killed his wife, all of his children, and his mother-in-law.’ Now that let me see what a lousy judge of character I was or how near any of us are to that moment of insanity that we could let go and do something like that. But that was kind of an unhappy experience. That shoulder was dislocated on twelve pictures, and I’ve had broken or cracked ribs four or five times. One time we were doing a fight in one of those half-hour westerns and somebody knocked me against a post that had some steel traps hanging on it, and the way I rolled into it I just cracked the ribs. Another time we were doing a domestic thing which I was supposedly in a fight with the young kid who wanted to marry my daughter and he grabbed me around the chest and cracked two ribs. You never know when something like that is going to happen. I have never held up production. Well, yes I did. One of the shoulder dislocations was in a Wild Wild West, and I was playing a
demented Confederate soldier. The shoulder went out, and rather than recast the part they waited six weeks, and did everything else. And then Ross Martin came in and we finished the picture. But that’s the only time I can remember that it actually caused an adjustment on a production schedule.”

Dabbs mentioned that he was not a horseman, and even though he worked in many westerns he never needed that talent. “I was only on a horse twice,” he said. “One time it was a stationary shot on a sound stage, and the other one I climbed on and rode off. I don’t ride, and it’s one of those things I dared not do after this shoulder started dislocating. They had told me that on the thirteenth dislocation I would have to have surgery that would limit the amount of movement to where I’d never be able to lift my arm high enough to comb my hair. I didn’t want to do that if I could help it.”

Howdy Tom!!

Tom, thanks once again, for allowing us to share your conversation with one of the greatest character actors of all time, Dabbs Greer!! I noticed that Dabbs mentioned that he would not have liked to be a "star" because they always have to be in top form. I have watched Dabbs Greer in every imaginable role, since the 50's and I have never seen him in a role, that he didn't play perfectly. As I said earlier, they just don't make'um like Dabbs Greer anymore!!!!! He was one of a kind and it'll be a while before we see another actor of his talent come down the pike!!!!!

Ed