Jewel Franklin Guy, known professionally as James Best, was an American television, film, stage, and voice actor, as well as a writer, director, acting coach, artist, college professor, and musician. During a career that spanned more than 60 years, he performed not only in feature films but also in scores of television series, as well as appearing on various country music programs and talk shows. Television audiences, however, perhaps most closely associate Best with his role as the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane in the action-comedy series The Dukes of Hazzard, which originally aired on CBS between 1979 and 1985. He reprised the role in 1997 and 2000 for the made-for-television movies The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! and The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood (2000).
Best in 1964
Best with Andy Griffith on CBS's The Andy Griffith Show (1961)
Best with Laura Devon (center) and Anne Francis in The Twilight Zone episode "Jess-Belle" (1963)
The Dukes of Hazzard is an American action comedy TV series created by Gy Waldron, that was aired on CBS from January 26, 1979, to February 8, 1985, with a total of seven seasons consisting of 147 episodes. It was consistently among the top-rated television series in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Title card
Cast of The Dukes of Hazzard (from left): (bottom) John Schneider, Tom Wopat, Catherine Bach, Denver Pyle, Peggy Rea; (top) Ben Jones, Sorrell Booke, James Best, Sonny Shroyer
Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer as Coy and Vance Duke, 1982
The General Lee (Dodge Charger)