View Full Version : Dabbs Greer on SNL (!)


jehobden
04-05-2011, 08:07 PM
I have Seasons 1, 3, & 5 of Saturday Night Live on DVD, and in the 4th ep of Season 1 (Candice Bergen's first hosted ep of SNL), the film by Albert Brooks was a 7 min-long film which was a satire of network promo films. This film was a promo for midseason replacements which NBC had "waiting in the wings" to replace its new fall shows which would end up flopping. Though I'd seen this film a few times before, I'd never before noticed that Dabbs Greer had a small part in the 3rd replacement series promo "Black Vet", which was about a black Vietnam vet who was now a black veterinarian in a small Southern town. In a short scene in the phony promo, a man wearing a cowboy hat w/ a Southern drawl claims that his dog, Duke, doesn't want the vet to operate on him, and Dabbs Greer, in a Southern drawl rather than Alden's Midwestern accent, played the gentleman. I have not located this film on You Tube or anywhere online yet, but here is a link to the transcript of the full film:

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75dbrooks.phtml

If you look about 2/3 of the way down for "Dr. Bowman", Mr. Greer played the "Man" speaking w/ him. It's interesting seeing the other people in this promo that I (or others) recognized, like Rene Auberjonois in the 1st promo (Medical Season) & Kay Lenz as the single gal in the 2nd (The Three of Us). Of course, Albert Brooks himself played the husband in the 2nd promo, living w/ his wife AND her best friend. This film was made more than a year before Three's Company premiered, but it has a small resemblance to it. 11 years earlier NBC's 90 Bristol Court's 3rd segment, Tom Dick & Mary, had the same setup but w/ the genders changed and likely not nearly the same racy overtones as Brooks' promo.

catlover79
04-05-2011, 08:15 PM
I can't even imagine him on a show like SNL!!! :eek: :lol:

biffbronson
04-05-2011, 08:41 PM
What a remarkable career he had. He did so many western episodes for shows like Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, etc. that you're almost more likely to find him in the cast of a random ep than not...! And then we go on to Lassie (as an escaped convict), Gomer Pyle, Dobie Gillis... He did show his versatility often, so I bet he could pull off most any role that was handed to him.

When I'm watching the old half-hour, b/w Gunsmoke eps, I sometimes don't recognize him right off -- but that distinctive voice is a dead giveaway!

catlover79
04-05-2011, 08:44 PM
Not to mention his last big role - that of the elderly version of Tom Hanks' character in The Green Mile. :cool:

70s show watcher
05-20-2011, 07:02 AM
I can't even imagine him on a show like SNL!!! :eek: :lol:he was pretty funny in the film even though he only had a few lines