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Robert R. Shafer

American actor

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2025
Entity authorityQ7349121 ↗
Source-derived summary

Robert Ray Shafer (born April 10, 1958) is an American character actor who has appeared in film and television. Shafer, sometimes credited as Bobby Ray Shafer, is best known for playing Bob Vance on the American sitcom The Office. In 1989, he portrayed Officer Ted Warnicky (also known as Joe Vickers) in the horror-comedy Psycho Cop and later reprised the role in Psycho Cop 2.

Early life and education

Robert Ray Shafer, Jr. was born in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1958. His father, a heavy equipment operator, died in a car accident when he was nine years old. He attended high school in Romeo, Michigan, and graduated in 1976.

Shafer attended Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before moving to Los Angeles where he modeled and took acting classes with Peggy Feury.

Editorial summary

“Robert R. Shafer” enters the record as american actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Shafer and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 1989, 1976—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1958-04-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Robert, Shafer and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Robert R. Shafer” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Robert, Shafer and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7349121. VIAF identifies the subject as 5143923. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1989 and 1976.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert R. Shafer”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert R. Shafer primary sources, Robert R. Shafer archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Robert R. Shafer”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert R. Shafer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.