James Best (1926–2015)

James Best was an actor best known as Rosco P. Coltrane on the tv series Dukes of Hazzard, but he had a long and respectable career for three decades before that show forever cemented him in the public mind as a sort of silly, bumbling clown. Best appeared in good roles in over 70 movies and literally hundreds of tv episodes, and worked (primarily in serious films) with stars and directors such as James Stewart, Randolph Scott, Alfred Hitchcock, Budd Boetticher, Sam Fuller, Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, and Humphrey Bogart. He writes (with the help of collaborator Jim Clark) in a folksy style befitting his upbringing in tiny towns of Kentucky and Indiana. He provides a great deal of welcome detail to much of what he describes, from his boyhood and military service in World War II to his long acting career, though he seems to hurry through the late portions of the latter. Best presents himself as a genuinely nice guy with strong opinions and a strong sense of self. I wish he'd gone into a little more detail about his films and television work, but there's so much of it that it makes sense that the book is not overly inclusive, especially since it seems likely its intended audience was mainly Dukes of Hazzard fans and not film historians. Best is dismissive of modern day movies and, like many old-school actors I've talked to or read about, feels that the good old days were in almost all ways better than now. He writes with pride of his accomplishments but without excessive braggadocio. For film buffs of a certain age, for whom Best was an extremely familiar character actor in the 1950s and 1960s, this is quite an informative and enjoyable read.… (plus d'informations)