The Man Who Played Boss Hogg Was a Genius and an American Hero?

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, The Dukes of Hazzard spent seven seasons regaling television viewers with the antics of a group of Southern cousins as they dealt with everyday life that somehow involved leaping over ramps in their iconic car, the General Lee. Opposing the cousins with all the skills of Barney Fife on Valium, stood, among others, Commissioner Boss Hogg, a corrupt and greedy politician that managed to embody every Southern stereotype while still being a beloved character to many who watched the show. Played by longtime actor Sorrell Book, the man himself had a much wider range of skill and talents than the bumbling Boss would have some believe. Let’s take a listen to the story.

00:01:01
Speaker 2: Just a good old Boss.

00:01:04
Speaker 3: When you hear the name Boss Hogg, what do you think of? Most likely, the corrupt boss of Hazzard County that was forever trying to entrap those rascally Duke boys and lock them up on one false charge after another.

00:01:17
Speaker 4: Glory boys are going to be out of my head.

00:01:20
Speaker 1: For two years.

00:01:25
Speaker 3: You conjure up images of a bald, portly, short man and his trusty sidekick, Roscoe P. Coltrane, who together ruled Hazzard County, Georgia, with an iron fist. You probably don’t give much thought to the actor who portrayed Boss Hogg, Sorrell Book. After all, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about him other than that he seemed to have perfected the buffoonish, cartoon-like character that was Boss Hogg. But what if I told you that Sorrell Book, the man who played Boss Hogg of The Dukes of Hazzard, was actually a bona fide genius and a legitimate war hero? Would you believe me? Well, it is true. I’m Nick Ragone, host of the popular YouTube channel This Day in History with Nick Ragone, and we’ve been doing a series of videos on Hollywood heroes, the men and women of film and TV who served their country during wartime. So many of the people that we admired from the movies and TV also served in combat and rarely, if ever, spoke about it. People like Russell Johnson, the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. The guy flew forty-four combat missions in the Pacific during World War II and received a Purple Heart. Art Carney of The Honeymooners also received a Purple Heart during World War II. Betty White and Bea Arthur, two of The Golden Girls, served in the Army and Marines, respectively, during the Second World War. The list of actors and athletes who have served during combat just goes on and on and on. But the person who has received the most interest by far in our series has been Book, Boss Hogg, and it’s not even close. People are absolutely stunned and fascinated to learn that Sorrell Book was the polar opposite of his most iconic character, Boss Hogg.

00:03:13
Speaker 4: How’s that truth, sir, was creeping into his domestic bliss. Jefferson Davis Hogg, you are a low-down polecat. If, however, there was work, yeah, but, Lulu, Kim’s, I didn’t mean what I said, and that is—I meant it, but I didn’t mean to say it.

00:03:26
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I mean…

00:03:27
Speaker 2: What I mean is, I can’t help, for some compelling…

00:03:31
Speaker 4: reason, from saying anything but the awful truth: that you married me for my money. That was the only way to get it. And I’m as big as a house. Well, they’re all different-sized houses.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: And that when I went to the beauty parlor, it looked like I never got waited on.

00:03:46
Speaker 4: Did you? I mean, didn’t you mean?

00:03:48
Speaker 2: I don’t know what I mean. I just know that I can’t help what’s come over me! This good troops real well, you out!

00:04:07
Speaker 3: It just goes to show that you should never judge a book by its cover, pun intended. You know, the word ‘genius’ gets thrown around a lot, way too much, in fact, but in the case of Sorrell Book, it really does apply. The man was an honest-to-goodness genius at the time, with an IQ that’s off the charts. You don’t believe me? Try this on for size. Sorrell Book graduated. He graduated from Columbia University, one of the most prestigious and difficult colleges in the country at that time, at the age of nineteen. Mind you, most people are wrapping up high school or entering their freshman year at that age, and he’s already earned a degree in drama. During his time at Columbia, he was a very accomplished Shakespearean actor, and he immediately went on to receive a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama, the premiere program for serious thespians. By the time he was twenty-one, so Sorrell Book is twenty-one years old, has degrees in drama from Columbia and Yale. He’s already well regarded and making a name for himself in the stage community. And what does he decide to do? He joins the United States Army. The Korean War had just begun, and there was a need for counterintelligence officers who were fluent in Korean and Chinese and who could help with translations, interrogations, counterintelligence operations, misinformation, and a whole bunch of other classified work. Well, the part I haven’t told you yet is that Sorrell Book was also fluent in twelve languages, and, as he put it, semi-fluent or conversational in six other languages. And those languages included Russian, Chinese, and Korean, among others, which came in really handy during the Cold War and specifically the Korean War. Look, mastering more than a few languages is really, really hard. Being fluent in a dozen or so languages isn’t only off the charts insanely difficult, but it probably made him one of only a handful of people on the planet at the time who was fluent or semi-fluent in more than a dozen languages, especially some really difficult ones. He quite literally could have done anything he wanted to. He was that brilliant, and yet he chose to serve his country at the outset of the Cold War, a time when the world was a pretty scary place. Remember, the Soviets had just acquired the atomic bomb a few years earlier. There was now a hot war in Korea that most Americans really didn’t understand. The Red Scare in the U.S. was just beginning to take off. Our country was on edge, and there was still fatigue from World War II. Remember? But Sorrell Book answered the call when he didn’t have to, and that may be the most impressive thing about the guy. This wasn’t World War II, which almost everyone felt compelled to assist in some way. The Korean War: a much different situation. And for a man with this many options, this brilliant, to put his life and career on hold to serve his country, is a pretty extraordinary thing to do. Sadly, much of his work during the Korean War remains classified to this day. There’s really not much in the public domain about specifically what he did, other than that he specialized in counterintelligence. I really hope someday that his file is declassified so we can better understand what he worked on. And of course, Sorrell, like so many of the Greatest Generation heroes, never, ever spoke a word of his service. In fact, whenever anyone asked him about being in the Army or serving in the Korean War, his standard answer was, “I’m just an ordinary guy from Buffalo, New York.” What’s so fascinating about Sorrell isn’t just his service during the Korean War and his true genius, but also his career arc. So many actors that are identified with one character tend to denigrate or downgrade that role, or even run away from the character. Think Carroll O’Connor with Archie Bunker, Robert Reed as Mike Brady, even Jason Alexander as George, to some extent, because they don’t want to be solely remembered for that, or sometimes they don’t even love the character that much, or even like them—the characters are beneath them or not really who they are. But that was never the case with Sorrell. Book. He played one of the most ridiculous characters in TV history, and I dare you to find a quote from him denigrating Boss Hogg or the show. You won’t find it because it doesn’t exist. You probably remember seeing him on MASH or Columbo, Gunsmoke, The Rockford Files, and a million other shows. You may not have always recognized him because as Boss Hogg, he actually wore a fat suit, believe it or not. And there’s no way he could have known that The Dukes of Hazzard would be a smash hit and run for as long as it did, and that he would sort of be the breakout star in a way. That show wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining without him. And the thing that people remember about The Dukes of Hazzard is the car, the General Lee, Boss Hogg, and of course, Daisy Duke, or more specifically, Daisy Dukes. And so, that’s what we remember him for: Boss Hogg. It would have been nice to know all this about him while the show was running, but these heroes just didn’t work that way. They weren’t going to talk about themselves, and they rarely did. It certainly would have changed the way I looked at the character of Boss Hogg, for sure. God bless this extraordinary man and patriot, Sorrell Book.

00:09:37
Speaker 4: I bet there’s a reward in all this big enough to choke a plow horse! Well, what are you standing there for? Lunkhead! Mound of massive manhood! Name two. I was missed. Paw spread out.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: And you get them!

00:09:59
Speaker 4: Well, you just…

00:10:02
Speaker 2: Fat in the system.

00:10:03
Speaker 1: Lack of two modern-day Robin Hoods, and a terrific job on the storytelling, production, and editing by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to Nick Ragone. You can find him on YouTube’s This Date in History. And what a story he told about… Sorrell Book, the polar opposite of the character he played in The Dukes of Hazzard! And of course, he graduated from the Yale School of Drama, the best in the country, at the age of twenty-one, and then decided to volunteer for the Korean War, being involved in the most important part of warfare, and that, of course, is counterintelligence. The story of Boss Hogg—that is, the man who played him, Sorrell Book, here on our American Stories.