James Best
AKA
"Rosco P. Coltraine"
& Flash
James Best Filmography
    James Best was born by the name of Jules Guy in the small town of Powderly, Kentucky on July 26, 1926.  He was one of 12 children.  His mother died when he was three years old and his father, a coal miner who was fightiing alcoholism, was unable to keep the family together.  Jim was taken to a orphanage by his sister, and was adopted two years later by Armen and Essa Best, of Corydon, Indiana.  Best was a  lumber-mill worker.
     Best graduated high school during World War II, and served in an Army Air Corps combat unit in Europe.  When he return home he started acting and modeling in New York where he landed his first movie role in the 1950 western
Comanche Territory. While Best was in Hollywood he appeared in many different films such as The Caine Mutiny, The Left-Handed Gun, and Sounder where he played a much nastier sheriff than Rosco.
     Best moved to Jackson, Mississippi where he taught acting at Ole Mississippi State University where he helped founded the state's film commission.  After eighteen years of his first marriage failed, his longtime friend Burt Reynolds who had been urging for Best to come back to show business, Best served as a associate producer and writer of Reynolds' in the film called
Gator.
     Best later opened up a studio in Hollywood where he taught oncamera technical workshops where he later met his current wife Dorothy Collier Best.  Dorothy later wound appear in a Dukes episode called
The Rustlers. Best had heard of Warner Bros. looking for actor for a new show called the Dukes of Hazzard. Best didn't want an part of it.  He thought it was about in New York street gang.  Executives told Best that is was about some good ol' boys down in Georgia.  Best tried out for the job of sheriff  Rosco P. Coltraine and successfully got the part.                                                                Information from the Dukes of Hazzard Unoffical Companion.
Rosco P. Coltraine was a off the wall sheriff who helped the commissioner Boss J.D.Hogg of Hazzard County run business crooked.  Although they ment no harm, they wound always try to scam the Dukes.  Rosco was a very simple meaned person and a very wrackless driver, so it made it easy to get away from him in Hot Pursuit. Rosco also had his beloved dog Flash which his additude was completly opposite of his name.  He never moved much or very fast at all, as most Bassett Hounds don't move fast.  Flash hated Boss Hogg but loved the Duke boys.