There's more to actor James Best than Rosco P. Coltrane, the bumbling, corrupt country sheriff he played on the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard."
"A lot of people don't realize it, but I did over 600 TV shows and 85 features," said Best, 84, a Kentucky native who now lives in Hickory.
Those roles include movies with Jimmy Stewart and Gene Autry; two appearances on "The Andy Griffith Show," in which he played Jim Lindsey, a guitar player who got his equipment from a music shop in Winston-Salem; and multiple appearances on "The Twilight Zone," a show he describes as "a training ground for all of us actors." He was also a contract player at Universal Studios, and more than 200 of his film and TV credits are for Westerns.
"I'm very lucky. I went to Hollywood when it was really Hollywood," he said.
But he doesn't shy away from the fan following he gained from "The Dukes of Hazzard," and he is enthusiastic about this month's DVD release of "The Dukes," a 1983 Saturday-morning cartoon version of the show. The four-DVD set isn't sold in stores, but it's available from WBshop.com, Warner Bros.' DVD-on-Demand mail-order division.
"It's going to introduce a third generation to the fun we had on 'The Dukes of Hazzard' when we did the live show," he said. "I'm really very happy to be part of something parents can share with their children and not be embarrassed. A lot of stuff coming out of Hollywood these days is not conducive to children."
Unlike many cartoons, in which the performers record their voices separately, the cast for "The Dukes" united in a recording studio to record the dialogue.
"It was interesting to me. I had never done a voiceover," he said. "It was something none of us had done. We were all together in the room, in a nice air-conditioned studio, instead of out on location.
"We took turns going up to the mic doing our lines," he said. "We were all there laughing together and giggling between takes."
The first season of the cartoon came during the season in which, because of a contract dispute, "Dukes" stars Tom Wopat (Luke Duke) and John Schneider (Bo Duke) had left the show. As a result, their live-action replacements, Byron Cherry (Cousin Coy Duke) and Christopher Mayer (Cousin Vance Duke), were in the cartoon series along with Best, Catherine Bach (Daisy Duke), Denver Pyle (Uncle Jesse) and Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg).
By the time the second season of the cartoon came along, Schneider and Wopat had returned to the live-action show, and they reprise their roles in the later episodes of the cartoon.
The live-action version ran from 1979 to 1985. One of the reasons Best did the show was that he was told it would be shot in Georgia, where the story was set.
"I had helped Burt Reynolds down there on the movie 'Gator,' and I did a rewrite on the script of that," he said. "There were such beautiful landscapes. … Then when we got down there [for 'The Dukes of Hazzard'], we shot five episodes and then moved back to Los Angeles."
After the show ended, Best moved to Florida for a while until "we had four hurricanes go over our house, and I said, 'The good Lord is telling us to get out of Dodge,'" he said. He looked around and decided to move to Hickory.
"We have the beautiful four seasons in North Carolina, and I'm right here on the lake, Lake Hickory," he said. "I'll go fishing, then come up to the house and paint in my art gallery or work on scripts."
He has a film company that has worked on such family-friendly movies as "Fireproof" and "Facing the Giants," and he continues to act occasionally. He also paints, runs his own website at Jamesbest.com, and makes personal appearances at autograph shows and conventions. This year, he made 22 appearances, traveling to five states.
"I keep busy for an 84-year-old man," he said with a laugh. And he has no plans to slow down.
"I'll never retire," he said. "When they plant my butt in the ground, I'm still going to be saying 'Just one more take!'"
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