James Best
Birth : 1926-07-26, Powderly, Kentucky, USA
Death : 2015-04-06
History
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).
Paddy Kerrigan
Pampered Manhattan housewife Desiree Harper has it all. That is until her husband unexpectedly dumps her for his acupuncturist. Faced with an airtight prenup, Desiree reluctantly lands a job making cupcakes at her father's bakery in Flemington, NJ. She soon discovers there's more to life than 5th Avenue and true love can be even sweeter in small town America.
Writer
A reality TV crew charter a boat to an island for filming, one which the boat's captain had been to before and attacked by giant shrews, more than fifty years earlier.
Thorne Sherman
A reality TV crew charter a boat to an island for filming, one which the boat's captain had been to before and attacked by giant shrews, more than fifty years earlier.
McClancy
The curiously named, Moondance Alexander is a spirited teen living with her eccentric mother. She is faced with another uneventful summer until she discovers a lost pinto pony named Checkers who has jumped out of his paddock. Although Moondance returns the horse to his rightful owner, the gruff and mysterious Dante Longpre, she is convinced that Checkers is a champion jumper in disguise and is determined to help him realize his full potential. Moondance manages to talk Dante into training her and Checkers for the Bow Valley Classic and despite the criticism of her peers; discovers that perseverance, loyalty and individuality can land you in the winner's circle.
Hank Larson
A road trip to Los Angeles inadvertently leads a young man from Wyoming into a wild maze of psychotic hit-men, racy women, jewel thieves and a salsa band.
Sgt. David Brent (archive footage) (uncredited)
Samuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.
Rosco P. Coltrane
The Duke Boys and company travel to Hollywood to sell some musical recordings in order to raise money to build a new hospital in Hazzard County. However, when their recordings and money are stolen, they wind up on the run from mysterious hitmen, sleazy record producers, Russian gangsters, and vicious loan sharks.
Wilbur Johnson
Wilbur works in an old carnival and shows some gruesome things to the public. He covers his face because he had a sadistic father who burned his face as a child. Everybody makes jokes about his scars and when the new boss fires him, he goes to an old swamp-witch who gives him a peace of wood from a hanging tree. Wilbur makes a mask from this piece of wood and puts all his anger in this mask. When he puts the mask on, everybody who looks at him commits suicide.
Writer
Wilbur works in an old carnival and shows some gruesome things to the public. He covers his face because he had a sadistic father who burned his face as a child. Everybody makes jokes about his scars and when the new boss fires him, he goes to an old swamp-witch who gives him a peace of wood from a hanging tree. Wilbur makes a mask from this piece of wood and puts all his anger in this mask. When he puts the mask on, everybody who looks at him commits suicide.
Boss / Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane
Mama Josephine Max wants to build a theme park in Hazzard, right on the Duke family farm! To stop her, Bo and Luke have to win a cross-country moonshine race. Because that's how things get settled in Hazzard.
Co-Writer
Legendary stunt man, Sonny Hooper remains one of the top men in his field, but due to too many stressful impacts to the spine and the need to pop pain killers several times a day, he knows he should get out of the industry before he ends up permanently disabled.
Cully
Legendary stunt man, Sonny Hooper remains one of the top men in his field, but due to too many stressful impacts to the spine and the need to pop pain killers several times a day, he knows he should get out of the industry before he ends up permanently disabled.
Pacemaker Patient
Wendell Lawson has only six months to live. Not wanting to endure his last few months of life waiting for the end, he decides to take matters into his own hands and enlists the help of a delusional mental patient to help him commit suicide.
Associate Producer
Wendell Lawson has only six months to live. Not wanting to endure his last few months of life waiting for the end, he decides to take matters into his own hands and enlists the help of a delusional mental patient to help him commit suicide.
Texan
A Vietnam veteran, Charles Rane, returns home after years in a POW camp and is treated as a hero. When thugs invade his home to steal the silver coins he received for his service, they mangle his hand and leave him and his family for dead. Rane survives and becomes obsessed with getting revenge. Aided by his loyal friend Johnny Vohden, Rane, now wielding a hook for a hand, sets out on his mission of vengeance.
Jim
In the silent film era, attorney Leo Harrigan and gunslinger Buck Greenway are hired to stop an illegal film production. However, they soon team up with the filmmakers and become important players in the show business industry. Leo learns he has a talent for directing, and Buck's cowboy persona quickly earns him leading-man status — but both men fall for beautiful starlet Kathleen Cooke, leading to a heated personal rivalry.
Pellegrino
In this horror-drama the festive fun of the annual Mardi Gras celebration is brought to a halt when a swarm of African killer bees escape from a foreign freighter.
Production Assistant
After his release from prison, notorious ex-con and moonshine distiller Gator McKlusky moves in with his father in a cabin in the Okefenokee Swamp. His bootlegging plans are cut short, however, when a federal agent tells McKlusky that he will lose custody of his 9-year-old daughter unless he helps bring down local crime lord Bama McCall. McKlusky enlists the help of reporter Aggie Maybank and a few local eccentrics to bring down McCall's empire.
Dewey Barksdale
Billy Joe confesses his love to the lovely Bobbi Lee only to cover his growing fear that he may, in fact, be homosexual. One night, at a barn dance, he gets a little drunk and rather than going with the hired whores, gives into his desires and sexual relations with an unnamed man. The guilt causes him to run away, hide in the woods and eventually confess everything to Bobbi Lee who doesn't want to believe him only because she was enjoying the forbidden nature of their love. In the end, he cannot accept his sexuality nor can he hide behind Bobbi Lee and that's why he throws himself off the Tallahachee bridge.
Bingo Washington
Two bargemen on the Mississippi River find themselves mixed up in a kidnapping and hijacking plot.
Sheriff Bert Hamilton
Ben Campbell, a 22 year old gas station attendant in a small desert town, is looking to make some extra money. He is surprised when Madec, a wealthy lawyer, asks him to be his guide on a hunting trip in the desert. When Madec accidentally shoots a prospector, he is fearful of what it will do his reputation and decides to eliminate the only witness, Ben, who is forced to go on the run. In addition to being hunted by Madec, Ben must also contend with the harsh desert elements. But if he does make it back to town alive, will anyone believe his story?
Sheriff Charlie Young
The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.
Rev. Emory Neill
Several people volunteer for a scientific experiment about mind-reading and memory, but the experiment goes horribly wrong.
Henry Burroughs
A Papago Indian returns to his reservation after a prison term and searches for his brother's killer.
Drew
A peace-loving, part-time sheriff in the small town of Firecreek must take a stand when a gang of vicious outlaws takes over his town.
Sergeant Carnavan
Jack is the sole survivor of a Japanese attack on his squad at Guadalcanal. Because of his heroism and the fact that he is still alive, he becomes a Medal of Honor hero. He returns to train new recruits for the Marines and falls for a girl named Peggy. When training and marriage leave him with an empty feeling, he decides on a transfer back to the front lines. Soon he will find that marriage and life will change his outlook on the grueling battles that lie ahead.
Dr. Ben Mizer
An artist has an opportunity to go to Paris and wants to bring his fiancee along. However, she's a psychiatrist who currently has three female patients who don't like men. So, he guises himself as three different men to gauge their trust and hopefully cure them so that his fiancee can go with him.
Carter, Rebel Soldier
Charlie Anderson, a farmer in Shenandoah, Virginia, finds himself and his family in the middle of the Civil War he wants nothing to do with. When his youngest boy is taken prisoner by the North, the Civil War is forced upon him.
Ralph Elkins
A dissatisfied ranch hand becomes a bounty hunter. He conspires with a crooked town boss to dirty up a neighboring village where a valuable railroad franchise is headed.
Scotty Wade
Gunslinger Murphy helps an ungrateful town fight off a raid by his former gang.
Stuart
With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a mental institution where a bloody murder has been committed.
Jericho Larkin
Two friends join together to strike oil during the Oklahoma oil boom of the 1920s, and wind up fighting over the same oil wells and the same girl.
Niergaard
In 1944, in eastern part of China, U.S.Army Major Baldwin and his volunteer team of demolition engineers are left behind the retreating Chinese forces. Their task is to slow down the Japanese advance into eastern China by blowing up bridges, roads, airfields and munitions dumps. They start by blowing up an American airfield and ammo dump. They receive the order to destroy a vital bridge over a mountain pass.The team uses a few army trucks to move around. At the bridge, they encounter a Nationalist Chinese Army unit in charge of guarding the bridge. Thanks to an American soldier who speaks some Chinese, Major Baldwin requests the permission, from the Chinese commander, to blow up the bridge.The Chinese colonel agrees but asks the American Major to do him a favor by also destroying a munitions dump located at some distance away.He also requests that Madame Sue-Mei Hung, the widow of a Chinese colonel, be transported by the American demolition team to the nearest major town.
Sam Mullen
A young man without surname inherits a big indebted ranch and has to prove his worthiness managing a cattle drive.
Thorne Sherman
Trapped on a remote island by a hurricane, a group discover a doctor has been experimenting on creating half sized humans. Unfortunately, his experiments have also created giant shrews, who when they have run out of small animals to eat, turn on the humans....
Sgt. David Brent
A young American serviceman stationed in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, jeopardises his future after falling in love with a German woman.
Billy John
On the way to pick up the bounty on a wanted murderer, a bounty hunter stops at a staging post where he is forced to continue his journey with two outlaws who want the murderer for their own reasons and a recently-widowed woman, with the murderer's brother and his men in hot pursuit.
Rhidges
Fighting men in World War II learn the value of courage and quickness at the risk of losing their lives.
Tom Folliard
When a crooked sheriff murders his employer, William "Billy the Kid" Bonney decides to avenge the death by killing the man responsible, throwing the lives of everyone around him into turmoil, and endangering the General Amnesty set up by Governor Wallace to bring peace to the New Mexico Territory.
Kit Caswell
An outlaw must decide whether to stick his neck out for an innocent man.
Doug Gerhardt
A neglected wife (Mala Powers) unknowingly places her family in danger when she becomes friends with a psychologically disturbed deliveryman (James Best).
Ted Hamilton
Chicago detectives in the 1880s head west to find the killers of their colleague.
Kermit
An out-of-work reporter (Leslie Nielsen) seeks out a bank robber, and his bride (Colleen Miller) has to rescue him.
Millard Chilson Cassidy
Army Captain Edward Hall returns to the US after two years in a prison camp in the Korean War. In the camp he was brainwashed and helped the Chinese convince the other prisoners that they were fighting an unjust war. When he comes back he is charged for collaboration with the enemy. Where does loyalty end in a prison camp, when the camp is a living hell?
Det. Arnie Arnhoff
Cop Andy Doyle investigates a car-bombing murder and the killing of a sleazy modeling agency owner. Are they connected?
Jim
A ballerina resorts to prostitution when her fiance is reported killed in World War II.
Crewman (uncredited)
Starship C57D travels to planet Altair 4 in search of the crew of spaceship "Bellerophon," a scientific expedition that has been missing for 20 years, only to find themselves unwelcome by the expedition's lone survivor and warned of destruction by an invisible force if they don't turn back immediately.
Bill Jackson
Matt Ballot has returned home after 12 years of hard-drinking in all 48 states. His wife has managed to raise their 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son nicely without his help. Matt is considered a disgrace to the town he came from and now he finds himself trying to win the love of his children, his wife, and the respect of the townspeople. Set in Arkansas in the 1920s.
Col. French's Orderly (uncredited)
A team of Air Force servicemen become stranded after setting up a weather station on an island of ice in Alaska.
Jason Brown
Rise, fall and execution of John Brown, fanatic abolitionist.
Lt. Robinson
A group of confederate prisoners escape to Canada and plan to rob the banks and set fire to the small town of Saint Albans in Vermont. To get the lie of the land, their leader spends a few days in the town and finds he is getting drawn into its life and especially into that of an attractive widow and her son.
Barr
A hardened career navel officer must come to terms with adapting to civilian life with the help of a waitress that can see through his tough veneer.
Lt. JG Jorgensen
When a US Naval captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardize his ship, the first officer relieves him of command and faces court martial for mutiny.
Private Bliss
When the army insists on building a fort on Indian land, in defiance of a treaty, the warnings of a scout go unheeded.
Dr. Sidney K. Fuller
Three men gamble their lives in space to change the history of the world
Deputy Gig
Outlaws plan a robbery to take place during a championship prizefight in Carson City, Nevada.
Primrose
In the weeks prior to the start of the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers hope to help their cause by inciting a Navajo war in the New Mexico Territory. Director Frederick de Cordova's 1953 western stars Audie Murphy, Robert Sterling, Joan Evans, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Palmer Lee, Jack Kelly, James Best, Bob Steele and Ralph Moody.
Corp. Gerad
19th-century army officer Lance Caldwell is assigned to Fort King in the Everglades. Immediately clashing with his commanding officer Major Dade, Caldwell opposes Dade's plans to wipe out the Seminole Indians. The fact that Caldwell was the boyhood chum of Seminole chief Osceola is all the more reason to resist Dade's genocidal policies. After a deadly confrontation which costs dozens of lives on both sides, Osceola rescues Caldwell, whereupon the latter is court-martialed. Later on, Osceola comes to Fort King to talk peace, and is promptly killed by persons unknown. An attempt is made to frame Caldwell for the killing, but the truth eventually prevails.
Cpl. Ransom
Francis the talking mule gets his owner in and out of trouble while he is taking basic training at West Point.
Cpl. Hassett
Major Jim Colton is a sympathetic leader who has a working relationship with Apache leader Cochise. Colton is undermined by corrupt and politically ambitious Indian agent Neil Baylor who sets up a false attack, and the abduction of a local farmer's son. While Colton is away investigating the matter, Baylor convinces Lieutenant Bascom that Cochise's band is to blame, and incites him to lead an expedition against the Apache band to return the boy.
Joe Rakich
Steve Kostain (Lund), nephew of the owner, begins working at a steel mill to learn the business from the bottom up. He rooms with a steel working family, the McNamaras, and falls for the daughter, "Red" (Sheridan), who is already involved with another steelworker, Jim (Duff.) Although he is at first has a hard time with his co-workers, he eventually wins them over, and also wins the girl.
Bitter Creek Dalton
Audie Murphy comes into his own as a Western star in this story. Wrongly accused by crooked railroad officials of aiding a train heist by his old friends the Daltons, he joins their gang and becomes an active participant in other robberies. Betrayed by a fellow gang member, Murphy becomes a fugitive in the end. Seeking refuge at the ranch of a reformed gang member, he hopes to flee with the man's daughter to South America, but he's captured in the end and led off to jail. The girl promises to wait.
Marvin Johnson
Ma and Pa are trying to raise enough money at the county fair to send their daughter Rosie to college. Ma competes in baking and Pa enters a trotter in a horse race, while Rosie takes up with handsome young Marvin Johnson.
Bert Keon
A gambler is thrown out of a western town, but returns when the town is suddenly threatened by a band of marauding Apaches.
Jerry Connell
A group of cadets have assorted problems at the U.S. Air Force Pilot Training Academy.
Sgt. Ralph Phelps
World War II drama about members of an American bomber squadron who are captured and held prisoners by the German army.
Cole Younger
Outraged by Redleg atrocities, the James and Younger Brothers along with Kit Dalton join Quantrill's Raiders and find themselves participating in even worse war crimes.
Crater
Lin McAdam rides into town on the trail of Dutch Henry Brown, only to find himself in a shooting competition against him. McAdam wins the prize, a one-in-a-thousand Winchester rifle, but Dutch steals it and leaves town. McAdam follows, intent on settling his old quarrel, while the rifle keeps changing hands and touching a number of lives.
Frank Addison
Professor Brookfield along with daughters Peggy and Susan move to small town Pasadena, California. Their new neighbor Mrs. Fielding helps them move in, and urges the girls to participate in the annual Rose Bowl beauty pageant. Meanwhile Mrs. Fielding's son Tom makes eyes at Peggy but she's smitten with a famous football star so she tries to redirect his interest to Susan.
Sam
Silver has been found on comanche territory and the government accomplished a peaceful agreement with the indians. When James 'Jim' Bowie comes into the scene he finds the white settlers living near by planning to attack the indians although they know about that agreement and the beautiful Katie seems to play a leading role in this intrigue.
