Known For
Acting
Born
Jul 26, 1926
Died
Apr 06, 2015
Place of Birth
Powderly, Kentucky, USA
Credits
154 titles
James Best
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia James Best (born Jewel Franklin Guy; July 26, 1926 – April 6, 2015) was an American television, film, character, voice, and stage actor, as well as a writer, director, acting coach, artist, college professor, and musician, whose career spanned seven decades of television. He appeared as a guest on various country music and talk shows. One of the busiest actors in Hollywood, who began his contract career with Universal Studios in 1949, where he met unfamiliar actors Julie Adams, Piper Laurie, Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. Best's long career began in films in 1950. He appeared primarily in Westerns, playing opposite Audie Murphy in Kansas Raiders (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952) and The Quick Gun (1964), Raymond Massey in Seven Angry Men (1955), George Montgomery in Last of the Badman (1957), Frank Lovejoy in Cole Younger Gunfighter (1958), and Randolph Scott in Ride Lonesome (1959). He also starred in the science fiction cult movie, The Killer Shrews (1959) and its sequel, Return of the Killer Shrews (2012). He is most known for playing bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in the action/comedy Dukes of Hazzard, a role that he revised in The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! (1997) as his character was now "boss" of Hazzard County as well as sheriff, and again in The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood (2000).
Known For
Filmography
Hollywood in the Atomic Age: Monsters! Martians! Mad Scientists!
Self
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
Self (archive footage)
The Sweeter Side of Life
Paddy Kerrigan
Return of the Killer Shrews
Thorne Sherman
Moondance Alexander
McClancy
Hot Tamale
Hank Larson
CMT: Inside Fame
The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller
Sgt. David Brent (archive footage) (uncredited)
The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood
Rosco P. Coltrane
The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion!
Boss / Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
E! True Hollywood Story
Death Mask
Wilbur Johnson
B.L. Stryker
In the Heat of the Night
The Dukes
Rosco Coltrane (voice)
Enos
The Dukes of Hazzard
Rosco P. Coltrane
Centennial
Hooper
Cully
The End
Pacemaker Patient
Rolling Thunder
Texan
The Savage Bees
Pellegrino
Nickelodeon
Jim
Gator
Production Assistant
Ode to Billy Joe
Dewey Barksdale
The Runaway Barge
Bingo Washington
The Manhunter
Savages
Sheriff Bert Hamilton
Hawkins
Sheriff John Early
Sounder
Sheriff Charlie Young
The Brain Machine
Rev. Emory Neill
Run, Simon, Run
Henry Burroughs
The Mod Squad
Clay Lynch
Lancer
Firecreek
Drew
The Guns of Will Sonnett
First to Fight
Sergeant Carnavan
Felony Squad
The Green Hornet
Yale Barton
Hawk
Three on a Couch
Dr. Ben Mizer
Honey West
Vince Zale
Shenandoah
Carter, Rebel Soldier
Black Spurs
Ralph Elkins
Daniel Boone
Jethro Wyatt
Flipper
The Quick Gun
Scotty Wade
Shock Corridor
Stuart
Redigo
Burke's Law
Tucson, 'The Cowboy'