The Story of James Best (AKA Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane) of “The Dukes of Hazzard”

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American stories. Born in Kentucky, James Best was orphaned at the age of three and eventually adopted after high school. He joined the United States Army Air Corps during World War II in July of nineteen forty-four and served with the military police in war-torn Germany. He founded the James Best Theater Center in Los Angeles, becoming one of the hottest acting coaches in Hollywood, training the likes of Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Glenn Campbell, Quentin Tarantino, and Regis Philbin. Best and his wife actually gave the young Tarantino a place to sleep while he struggled to make it in Hollywood, just before landing his role as Roscoe P. Coltrane on “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Best taught drama for two years at the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, right where we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi. Here’s James Best with his story.

00:01:13
Speaker 2: After the war, there were what they call werewolf gangs in Wiesbaden, Germany, and they were teenagers that had actually been trained by the SS, and actually, a lot of them fought in the war. They were like twelve-year-olds. They’d get on a bicycle with a bazooka and fight the Russians with tanks. Uh, I said, they were rough. Well, we had to clean up the town. Being so, I was getting shot at more than most people did in the war, you know. And I was going up to get a cup of coffee and a doughnut at the PX, and a girl walked down the steps, and she had a green uniform on with C.A.T. on her shoulder. I said, “Come into hell bit,” I said, “Come here, please,” in German, and she said, “I beg your pardon.” I said, “Are you an American?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “What’s going on?” I said, “What is the C.A.T.?” He said, “A Civilian Actress Technician.” And I said, “Uh, well, it’s that I’m an old country boy. I’ve got from that much about anything. I had never seen a play.” She said, “Well, we’re doing a play at the Wiesbaden Opera House.” I said, “Oh, great!” I said, “I’ll pick you up after the play.” So she said, “Well, I won’t go out with you, you know, just come see the play.” I said, “I don’t want to see the play. I’ll pick you up after it.” She said, “No, wait a go the work.” So I go over to see the play. I’m sitting in the audience, an old country boy. The curtain goes up, and I’m like a kid in Disneyland, and I could not believe this. This was like Comet of the World. I go back to the age to pick up the young lady, and here’s G.I.s getting dressed out of them from the show. I said, “Wait a minute, I’m a sergeant. What are these guys? What are they?” And they said, “They’re in the show. They tour. They’re treated like officers, and we tour around the French, British, American zone.” I said, “Wait a minute. I’m getting shot at every night, and these guys are traveling around with you pretty girls. I’m in the wrong outfit!” So I went to my commanding officer, and through certain circumstances, I had a pretty good record there, and so they transferred me into Special Service. I started acting, and I acted with these professional people and learned my craft. So later on, when I came back to the States, I hitchhiked in New York to be an actor. I had that experience, and so I spent about three years in New York. Did a Broadway show in summer stock, winter stock, and then was put under contract by Universal in nineteen forty-nine, and I was there for two years. So that started my career. I’ve counted over six hundred television shows. I’m very fortunate because I got to work back in those days, the golden days, when they used talent instead of reality stars. I really have a little sick coming out of Hollywood. You over, they’re doing remakes of things that we did forty years ago. Only one thing that’s different is that they use four-letter words every other word and body parts. And it’s funny. I worked with Gene Aundter and I Belong Cassidy in five movies, Jimmy Stewart, and I worked with Bouguard and Charles Guston Soon, and they were all these wonderful people: Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds. It’s funny. We didn’t have to have body parts fly. We didn’t need four-letter words. Till the guy we hated him, we knocked, just knocked him on his backside. I’d put a little chocolate syrup called my shirt, fall off my horse. You knew I was dead. You didn’t have to see my spine go fly across the room, you know. I did “The Caine Mutiny” with Boguard. I did “The Naked and the Dead,” you know. And Jimmy Stewart with my Oncon. I did five movies with him. I did “Chinanda,” “Fire Creek,” “Mountain Road,” “Hawkins Centers,” “Fella,” and so forth. I was doing “Mountain Road.” And Mr. Stewart in real life flew twenty-three combat missions in World War II. And while we were up there, an Act of Congress, they made Mr. Stewart a general. And I’m back there. I’m bored, I bore easy. I like actually, so I called down to room service and I said, “Uh, room service?” and they said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, this is Mr. Stewart.” “Yes, this is Mr. Stewart.” “Let me ask you, do you have any wine?” And they said, “Well, yes, sir, we have one.” He said, “Well, I don’t mean just any old wine. French. The French have good wine.” He said, “Yes, we have some very fire friends. Should a bottle up to Mr. Best sweet, may make it two?” Well, Mr. Stewart came back, and I said, “General!” He wasn’t used to that, and he said, “Yeah.” Well, I said, “Mr. Stewart, I used your voice to get two bottles of very fine French wine.” But I said, and he said, “Well, who’s going to pay for that?”

00:06:05
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:06:06
Speaker 2: God love him. He loved for me to imitate him. He’d always pretend like he was upset, but he wasn’t that doll. He wanted me to do it, get me in a position where I would have to try to imitate him.

00:06:16
Speaker 1: You know.

00:06:17
Speaker 2: God love him. He was marvelous. I was doing “Hooper” with Burt Reynolds, and I had written the script and performed on it, and my agent called and said, “I want to send you over on a series.” I said, and it’s called “Dukes.” I said, “I don’t want to do a gang thing. I really don’t.” They said, “No, no, no, no, this is a good old boy thing, and they’re going to shoot it in Covington, Georgia.” And they said, “I said, ‘You’re going to shoot it in Covington, Georgia. The fishing’s good, the people are nice, and they’re going to shoot the whole series in.'” And they said, “Yeah.” I said, “I’m going to go over and see about that.” So I go over there, and here is the producer, and the director, and the writers in the inquisition. They’re sitting there in a bunch of chairs, and they had one chair sitting out in front, and I sat down on that, and they said, “I said, ‘Now, what—what is—is ‘mis’ a sheriff?'” And I said, “How do you want me to play him?” They said, “Well, we would like for him to be amusing, he found funny.” And I said, “Well, I’ve played a lot of heavies, but I did. I started with Jerry Lewis in a movie called “Free on a County.” I said, “I can do comedy. I did that at the summer start.” So I thought, “What am I going to do? Because I do not want to embarrass the sheriffs in this world, because I have too much respect for the fire department and the sheriffs in the military.” So I said, “I’ll play him like a twelve-year-old who likes hot pursuit.” So what I did, when I said, “Let me read the script,” I read the script. And when I’m reading it, I did what I used to do with my little girls when they were little, and I seek chasing themy I going, “Don’t get you a little rusk!” Well, they fell off their chairs, and they signed me. I was the first one they put under contract.

00:07:52
Speaker 3: I have just caught the Duke boys going a half mile over the speed limit with my new radar.

00:07:58
Speaker 1: Good and.

00:08:00
Speaker 2: We shot five episodes down in Covington, Georgia, and then they moved it back to that cesspool called L.A.

00:08:11
Speaker 3: Whoa, whoa, look at their fa there! No, God, I love it.

00:08:17
Speaker 2: I love it. It’s hot.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: In Pursuit of Time Flies.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: My name is Jefferson Davis Hall.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: Oh, to g.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: Until two?

00:08:30
Speaker 1: Might you be.

00:08:33
Speaker 3: Bush?

00:08:34
Speaker 2: You know who I am? Russ Cool Rush, Copie Coltrane. Something wrong with his eyes? It’s his head. Insanity is suffering from a temporary case of Ami.

00:08:49
Speaker 1: Who is this lovely lady?

00:08:52
Speaker 2: Oh? Luke, that’s your wife? My why? Yeah? Uh?

00:09:03
Speaker 1: That’s you in the picture, though.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: Ain’t it? You should have shot the other side, the profile. You much got your arm right around my life. I love her very, what’s going on between the two of you? We mean as she’s your wife, but she’s my sister.

00:09:15
Speaker 3: Ooh, your sister?

00:09:18
Speaker 2: Now wait a minute, what, that makes you my brother-in-law? I had no idea how low I’d really sunk.

00:09:28
Speaker 3: The comedy team was Saw and I came about. Actually, at first, uh, Saw played such a heavy in the series, played plus a mean guy that so I went through the powers of being, said, “You know, it should be a nice relationship with Sorel, and I wouldn do sort of a modern-day Laurel and Hardy type of thing.” And if Roscoe likes Boss Hogg, there may be other people who will like him too. And it did. It worked very well, and that’s why we go, “Whooah, little fat little Buddy and Chubby Buddy,” and it really became a wonderful relationship. I believe in having fun, and I believe in making people laugh. I think there’s not enough laughter in this world. And if I contribute to that, the enjoyment of anything, I think perhaps maybe that was my purpose, rather than digging coal in Kentucky where my daddy and my family lived when I was a little boy.

00:10:27
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Heneghan. And you’ve been listening to James Best, the late James Best, who played Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane of “The Dukes of Hazzard” here on our American—

00:10:41
Speaker 2: Stories, flat in the system, lack of two modern-day Robin Hoo—