James Best
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).
Acting
Movie
Forbidden Planet
as Crewman (uncredited)
1956
TV
The Twilight Zone
as Jeff Myrtlebank
1959
TV
The Twilight Zone
as Billy-Ben Turner
1959
TV
Bonanza
as Sheriff Vern Schaler
1959
Movie
Winchester '73
as Crater
1950
Movie
The Caine Mutiny
as Lt. JG Jorgensen
1954
TV
The Dukes of Hazzard
as Rosco P. Coltrane
1979
Movie
Shock Corridor
as Stuart
1963
Movie
Rolling Thunder
as Texan
1977
TV
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
as Norman Frayne
1955
TV
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
as Hennessy
1955
TV
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
as Bish Darby
1955
TV
The Andy Griffith Show
as Jim Lindsey
1960
Movie
Shenandoah
as Carter, Rebel Soldier
1965
Movie
Ride Lonesome
as Billy John
1959
Movie
Hooper
as Cully
1978
TV
Perry Mason
as Allan Winford
1957
TV
Perry Mason
as Martin Potter
1957
Movie
The Left Handed Gun
as Tom Folliard
1958
TV
Gunsmoke
as Beal
1955
TV
Gunsmoke
as Charlie Noon
1955
TV
Combat!
as Trenton
1962
Movie
The Killer Shrews
as Thorne Sherman
1959
TV
The Green Hornet
as Yale Barton
1966
