The five-foot five Greer began life as Bettejane Greer in Washington, D.C. A beauty-contest winner and professional model from her teens, Greer began her show business career as a big band singer.
Howard Hughes spotted Greer modeling on the cover of Life magazine on June 8 1942 and sent her to Hollywood to become an actress. She married Rudy Vallee, her senior by 22 years, in 1943. Hughes lent out the actress to RKO to star in many films, including Dick Tracy (1945), Out of the Past (1947), They Won't Believe Me (1947), and the comedy/suspense film The Big Steal (1949), alongside Out of the Past co-star Robert Mitchum. Hughes refused to let her work for a time; when she finally began film acting again, she appeared in You're in the Navy Now (1951), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), Run for the Sun (1956), and The Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). In 1984, she was cast in Against All Odds, a remake of Out of the Past, as the mother of the character she had played in 1947. She also participated in an Out of the Past parody on TV's Saturday Night Live with Robert Mitchum. She also played the part of Norma Jennings' mother, Vivian Niles, in Twin Peaks.
Edward Lasker had been an owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses since 1929, and Ms. Greer also became an owner of race horses under her own name. Among her graded stakes race wins were the 1966 Withers and Jim Dandy Stakes and the 1967 Fall Highweight Handicap with the colt Indulto.
Greer died of cancer at the age of 76 in 2001 and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
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