James Best
Photoplayd Industry Rating
Not enough rated films yet to compute a weighted score.
Roles are weighted by involvement: director 1.0, screenwriter 0.7, lead 0.8, supporting 0.4, crew 0.1.
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
Credits
Hot Tamale (2006)
as Hank Larson
Forbidden Planet (1956)
as Crewman (uncredited)
Hooper (1978)
as Cully
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
as Lt. JG Jorgensen
Rolling Thunder (1977)
as Texan
Ride Lonesome (1959)
as Billy John
Winchester '73 (1950)
as Crater
Shenandoah (1965)
as Carter, Rebel Soldier
Firecreek (1968)
as Drew
The Left Handed Gun (1958)
as Tom Folliard
Shock Corridor (1963)
as Stuart
Sounder (1972)
as Sheriff Charlie Young
Nickelodeon (1976)
as Jim
The Rack (1956)
as Millard Chilson Cassidy
The Savage Bees (1977)
as Pellegrino
The End (1978)
as Pacemaker Patient
Verboten! (1959)
as Sgt. David Brent
The Battle at Apache Pass (1952)
as Cpl. Hassett
The Raid (1954)
as Lt. Robinson
The Naked and the Dead (1958)
as Rhidges
Moondance Alexander (2007)
as McClancy
The Quick Gun (1964)
as Scotty Wade
Cast a Long Shadow (1959)
as Sam Mullen
The Cimarron Kid (1952)
as Bitter Creek Dalton
Comanche Territory (1950)
as Sam
Seminole (1953)
as Corp. Gerad
Kansas Raiders (1950)
as Cole Younger
The Killer Shrews (1959)
as Thorne Sherman
The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood (2000)
as Rosco P. Coltrane
One Way Street (1950)
as Driver (uncredited)
Top of the World (1955)
as Col. French's Orderly (uncredited)
The Mountain Road (1960)
as Niergaard
City of Bad Men (1953)
as Deputy Gig (uncredited)
Black Spurs (1965)
as Ralph Elkins
First to Fight (1967)
as Sergeant Carnavan
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia (2013)
as Self (archive footage)
The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller (2002)
as Sgt. David Brent (archive footage) (uncredited)
The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! (1997)
as Boss / Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
The Sweeter Side of Life (2013)
as Paddy Kerrigan
Column South (1953)
as Primrose
They Rode West (1954)
as Lt. Finlay (uncredited)
Apache Drums (1951)
as Bert Keon
Hot Summer Night (1957)
as Kermit
The Yellow Tomahawk (1954)
as Private Bliss
The Runaway Barge (1975)
as Bingo Washington
Three on a Couch (1966)
as Dr. Ben Mizer
Francis Goes to West Point (1952)
as Corporal Ransom
Calling Homicide (1956)
as Det. Arnie Arnhoff
Come Next Spring (1956)
as Bill Jackson
Ode to Billy Joe (1976)
as Dewey Barksdale
I Was a Shoplifter (1950)
Actor
Seven Angry Men (1955)
as Jason Brown
Last of the Badmen (1957)
as Ted Hamilton
Run, Simon, Run (1970)
as Henry Burroughs
Target Unknown (1951)
as Sgt. Ralph Phelps
The Brain Machine (1972)
as Rev. Emory Neill
Peggy (1950)
as Frank Addison
Death Mask (1995)
as Wilbur Johnson
Gaby (1956)
as Jim
Flat Top (1952)
as Radio Operator
Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952)
as Marvin Johnson
Steel Town (1952)
as Joe Rakich
Air Cadet (1951)
as Jerry Connell
Cole Younger, Gunfighter (1958)
as Kit Caswell
Return of the Killer Shrews (2012)
as Thorne Sherman
Man on the Prowl (1957)
as Doug Gerhardt
Black Gold (1962)
as Jericho Larkin
Hollywood in the Atomic Age: Monsters! Martians! Mad Scientists! (2021)
as Self
Riders to the Stars (1954)
as Dr. Sidney K. Fuller
Savages (1974)
as Sheriff Bert Hamilton
Return from the Sea (1954)
as Barr
Skip Taylor (1953)
Actor
Aftermath (1960)
as Hardy Coulter