A Tribute to Clifton James, a Note on Typecasting & a Look at the Southern Sheriff and the Origin of the Species

What a character! That familiar face. The unmistakable voice. What a character - this is what we think of when we see our favorite actors. It doesn't happen often, but on rare occasions, a particular performer is so identified with one role that it becomes his or her mantle for the rest of their career. For more than 40 years, Clifton James, who died of complications from diabetes on April 15, 2017, aged 96, was constantly approached by fans who recognized him as the boisterous, blustering southern sheriff, J.W. Pepper, from two James Bond movies in the mid-1970s, "Live and Let Die" and "The Man with the Golden Gun." When it came to the unending attention, "It didn't bother him, and he rather liked it," said his sister, Bev Anslow. "He was an actor's actor, and he would act whatever part was given to him and genuinely enjoy the work."

George Clifton James was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in Clackamas County in northwest Oregon after the family lost its money in the Great Depression and lived with his maternal grandparents. In the 1930s, James worked with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps before enlisting in the U.S. Army.

The ladies at the USO had to love Staff Sgt. James' spit curl.

James served 42 months in the South Pacific and was decorated with two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star, and the Silver Star. According to his daughter, Lynn James, the first Purple Heart was awarded after a bullet pierced his helmet and ricocheted inside before coming out to split his nose. The Second Purple Heart came from losing his front teeth to shrapnel.

The Silver Star was awarded from his actions in combat on April 21, 1945. He was leading a combat patrol to determine the number of enemy entrenchments hidden among the ridges on the Philippines island of Jolo, where several U.S. attacks had already been driven back. James told his men to remain under cover while he crawled toward the Japanese defenses. Within 20 yards of a trench, he suddenly came under heavy automatic fire. "Then, with complete disregard for his life," the official citation read, James "charged the position, killing its occupants. Continuing on his mission, he crawled to a vantage point, where he could observe the activity of the enemy on the next ridge. With this valuable information gained, the forthcoming attack was a success."

Daughter Lynn James recalled that her father rarely spoke about the war and never related the events leading to his Silver Star. She said, "He lost too many friends."

After the war, Clifton James took acting classes at the University of Oregon and appeared in plays before moving to New York City to launch his acting career. Along with Ben Gazzara and George Peppard, James made his movie debut in 1957's "The Strange One." Based on Calder Willingham's controversial play "End as a Man," the psychological drama about dehumanizing hazing at a military academy challenged contemporary attitudes regarding homophobia, particularly in Gazzara's portrayal of an amoral schemer who manipulates his fellow gullible cadets as pawns for his own ends, until he's confronted by working-class freshman Peppard.

In "The Strange One," Clifton James portrays Colonel Ramsey
to Ben Gazarra's Jocko De Paris, a role initially coveted
by Gazzara's Actors studio colleague James Dean.

The entire crew and cast of "The Strange One"came from New York's Actors Studio, among them costars Pat Hingle, Peter Mark Richman, and James Olson.

More film and television roles for Clifton James followed "The Strange One," including the part of a sympathetic counselor at a psychiatric treatment school in 1962's "David and Lisa," a drama about the fragile intimacy between two adolescents suffering from mental illness. Directed by Frank Perry and scripted by his wife, Eleanor Perry (best known for their collaboration on 1970's "Diary of a Mad Housewife"), the film's troubled youths were portrayed by Keir Dullea (HAL 9000's human costar in "2001: A Space Odyssey") and Janet Margolin (Woody Allen's costar in "Take the Money and Run").

Keir Dullea observes Clifton James reprimand Janet Margolin
for drawing on the wall with a crayon in "David and Lisa.""

In the offbeat psychological western "Invitation to a Gunfighter" (1964), Yul Brynner played a mulatto Cajun gunslinger named Jules Gaspard d'Estaing, hired by unscrupulous banker Pat Hingle to kill Confederate veteran George Segal. Clifton James had a small role as Tuttle the bartender.

James appeared in a more conventional western in 1967, "Will Penny," an unglamorous, realistic portrait of an aging cowhand (Charlton Heston) who develops a tender relationship with a woman (Joan Hackett) and her young son. The supporting cast boasted excellent performances by Donald Pleasence, Lee Majors, Bruce Dern, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Anthony Zerbe, G.D. Spradlin, Matt Clark, and Luke Askew...In other words, a bunch of characters!

It looks like "Will Penny" was titled "The Bold" for West German
audiences. Charlton Heston (pictured here with Clifton James)
often said that of all his films, "Will Penny" was his favorite.

Probably the role that thrust Clifton James into the consciousness of moviegoers was that of Carr, the no-nonsense "floor-walker" at a chain-gang prison in the Deep South in "Cool Hand Luke" who sternly runs down the roll of rules for the newly incarcerated. Each edict is followed with the threat, if violated, of "a night in the box." One glance at the smirking Paul Newman, in the title role, prompts Carr to mutter prophetically,  "I hope you ain't gonna be a hard case."

"There's no playin' grab-ass or fightin' in the buildin'. You got a
grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon.
Any man playin' grab-ass or fightin' in the buildin'...
spends a night in the box."

James enjoyed another colorful role as a streetwise patrolman called Whitey in 1972's "The New Centurions," based on the novel by cop-turned-best-selling author Joseph Wambaugh. The episodic drama follows the experiences of three rookies - played by Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, and Erik Estrada - reporting for duty with the Los Angeles Police Department. The ensemble cast featured George C. Scott as a veteran policeman unsettled by mandatory retirement. In one of the film's more light-hearted vignettes, Whitey, the cigar-chomping old hand, settles a domestic dispute by solemnly "divorcing" the couple.

Clifton James first caught our attention in the Moviehouse with a a brief but memorable turn as a cynical master-at-arms in the U.S. Navy in 1973's "The Last Detail," starring Jack Nicholson and Otis Young as quarrelsome career sailors saddled with the chore of hauling a naive bumpkin (Randy Quaid) to the brig for lifting $40 from a charity collection box. The two lifers develop a liking for the simplistic rube and decide to show him a good time before he's locked away for eight years.

Otis Young, who died too soon at the age of 69 after a stroke, was an unrecognized talent who initially made an impression in the 1968 western series "The Outcasts," which cast him as a newly freed slave who partners with an ex-Confederate (Don Murray) to become bounty hunters. Early in the movie, Young's character, Mulhall, grumbles about the unasked-for detail he and "Badass" Buddusky (Nicholson) are assigned, telling the master-at-arms, "You're shittin' me!" Clifton James wryly responds. "I wouldn't shit you," pauses to look at his watch and, without missing a beat, continues, "you're my favorite turd."

Also in 1973 came the film role that would change Clifton James' career - or at least his career as viewed by audiences - that of Louisiana Sheriff J.W. Pepper in the 007 movie "Live and Let Die," the first of seven James Bond films starring Roger Moore. As opposed to Sean Connery's initial portrayal of Bond as a brutish, libidinous thug, Moore brought a more lighthearted charm and winking sense of humor to the character. On top of that, Clifton James' presence as the swaggering, big with a big mouth introduced a theretofore unseen comic relief to the 007 series.

"I take it this ain't exactly your debut at this sort of thing. You picked
the wrong parish to haul ass through! Nobody cuts and runs on
Sheriff J.W. Pepper! And it's him who's speakin' by the way."

Sheriff Pepper proved to be such a scene stealer that producers ensured that the character would be squeezed into Roger Moore's next 007 outing, 1974's "The Man with the Golden Gun." The fish-out-of-water "Ugly American" surfaces improbably as a tourist in Thailand at the exact same time that Bond arrives in pursuit of the notorious titular assassin (Christopher Lee).

"You're that secret agent! That English secret agent! From England!
You're chasin' somebody! Who you got this time, boy? Commies?
Let's go get 'em! I'm with you all the way!"

In a slapstick scene from "The Man with the Golden Gun," the bombastic lawman gets pushed into a Bangkok waterway by a baby elephant. Clifton's daughter Lynn recalled, "He wasn't supposed to actually go in." A stuntman was ready to perform the bit, but James had been given sugar lumps in his pocket to feed the elephant calf, and evidently, the actor wasn't fast enough in providing the snacks.

Sheriff J.W. Pepper also finds himself an unlikely shotgun rider alongside James Bond in a Bangkok car chase highlighted by a show-stopping, 270-degree corkscrew jump over a twisted, broken river bridge. In one of filmdom's first computer-modeled stunts, the jaw-dropping feat was conceived and first performed by racing driver Jay Milligan.

J.W. Pepper: "What the hell you doin' now, boy? The bridge is that
way!...You're not gonna - " James Bond: "I sure am, boy!
Ever hear of Evel Knievel?"

Daughter Lynn James recalled that her father met with a number of Southern sheriffs to prepare for his role as J.W. Pepper. Clifton himself commented, "I noticed they love their stomachs. They stick them out, they're really proud of their stomachs."

James virtually reprised the same character as Sheriff Chauncey in 1976's "Silver Streak" (pictured below), a tedious Hitchcockian thriller dubiously noteworthy for the first of four mismatched comedic pairings of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

For all intents and purposes, Clifton James' character in 1980's "Superman II" might as well have been called Sheriff J.W. Pepper, especially when his bluster is promptly deflated by the trio of supervillains from the Phantom Zone, General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O'Halloran).

"Hey, you hippies! Get yer butts off the road!"

It should be noted that when it comes to Southern blowhards with a badge, Clifton James' J.W. Pepper predated Jackie Gleason's Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the "Smokey and the Bandit" comedies by at least four years. The Brooklyn-born-and-raised Gleason, who would claim in his later years that he improvised most of his dialogue, purportedly based his character on Burt Reynolds' accounts of his father, who was chief of police in Riviera Beach, Florida, including the borrowing of the phrase "sumbitch."

"There's no way that you came from my loins! Soon as I get home,
first thing I'm gonna do is punch your mama in the mouth!"

If anywhere, Clifton James' character was based on a series of television commercials for Dodge automobiles, featuring a portly Southern sheriff in khakis and tinted sunglasses, which began airing in the fall of 1969. Sheriff Joe Higgins (portrayed by an actor whose real name was Joe Higgins) would pull over a sporty car with the admonition, "Boy, yo in a heap o' trouble!" only to be mollified by the vehicle's standard equipment.

Actor Joe Higgins became so popular that he was touted in a Dodge safety campaign.

 

Sheriff Higgins himself was probably a takeoff on Rod Steiger's Academy Award-winning characterization of Bill Gillespie, police chief of Sparta, Mississippi (a fictional community not to be confused with the real Sparta, Mississippi).

In the definitive tome Ain't That a Knee-Slapper: Rural Comedy in the Twentieth Century, author Tim Hollis asserted, "Historians have concluded that the model on which all future Southern sheriffs, comedic or dramatic, was based on was Rod Steiger's performance as the bigoted lawman in 'In the Heat of the Night.' There was certainly nothing funny about Steiger's role, but when people had been exposed to it, it became so familiar that it could be spoofed with no further explanation." Incidentally, Steiger was born in the Hamptons on Long Island and raised in Newark, New Jersey.

It was director Norman Jewison who suggested that Rod Steiger constantly chew gum while playing the part of Chief Gillespie. The actor at first balked at the notion but eventually accepted it, allegedly working his way through over 260 packs of gum by production's end.

In an April 2017 interview, the now 90-year-old director delighted in recalling, "I was always putting weight on Rod. They had a wonderful pecan pie we used to eat on the set in Illinois. And I was always saying, 'Have another piece of pie.' I wanted his belly to hang over his belt. I was always trying to make him look more like my image of a Southern sheriff. And he did. Also, he could improvise, and because he was a Method actor, he was always in character. When he wasn't shooting, he always wore his police cap and police boots."

Some believe that Steiger's character was, in part, inspired by Lawrence Rainey, the sheriff of Neshoba County, Mississippi, from 1963 to 1968, who was allegedly involved with the June 1964 deaths of a trio of young civil rights activists.

Rainey (pictured above) was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was ultimately acquitted of any involvement with the murders and subsequent cover-ups, but his career in law enforcement was permanently stymied, and he ended up taking jobs as an auto mechanic and security guard. Fictionalized depictions of Rainey were played by the multi-talented character actor Geoffrey Lewis in the acclaimed 1975 made-for-television movie "Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan" and by Gailard Sartain (a comedic actor best known as a foil for Jim Varney in the "Ernest" films and as a regular on "Hee Haw") in 1988's "Mississippi Burning" (pictured below), starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe.

According to the previously mentioned author of Ain't That a Knee-Slapper, Tim Hollis, the characterization of the clichéd Southern sheriff might have its roots in roles given to Slim Summerville, a sad sack-faced actor who was one of director Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops in silent films, who would turn up frequently in movies of the 1930s as a bungling rural lawman, providing comic relief in crime dramas.

When television's favorite Southern sheriff, Andy Taylor, of the fictional North Carolina community of Mayberry, was first introduced to viewers, he was a far different creature than the beloved homespun peacekeeper. Griffith was already established as a bucolic humorist (particularly noted for his 1953 monologue "What It Was Was Football") and a surprising film actor of note for hayseed roles in Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," Mervyn LeRoy's "No Time for Sergeants," and "Onionhead" when he appeared as a guest star on an episode of "The Danny Thomas Show" titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith."

The February 1960 episode of "The Danny Thomas Show" had Andy arresting Danny for running a stop sign in Mayberry. Playing on popular perceptions of small-town speedtraps, Sheriff Taylor was depicted as an abrasive carpetbagger-in-reverse who also happens to be the hamlet's mayor, judge, and newspaper editor. Ron Howard played the sheriff's son, Opie, while the future Aunt Bee, actress Frances Bavier, portrayed townswoman Henrietta Perkins. Interestingly, the town drunk wasn't Otis (played by Hal Smith) but a character named Will, portrayed by Frank Cady, an actor who would become familiar to viewers as general store merchant Sam Drucker on "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction."

The tipsy town tippler (Frank Cady) pleads his case before Mayberry
Justice of the Peace Andy Taylor while Danny Thomas and
Marjorie Lord look on in "Danny Meets Andy Griffith."

At the onset of "The Andy Griffith Show," which aired from 1960 to 1968, the star spared little subtlety in presenting the pastoral peace officer as a coarse country bumpkin, grinning from ear to ear and speaking in frantic hems and haws. Griffith gradually abandoned the slack-jawed, rustic characterization when he realized that he was essentially playing the straight man for all the countrified kooks around him, becoming, in the words of producer Aaron Ruben, "this Lincolnesque character."

Our attention in the Moviehouse, however, reverts to characterizations of Dixie-fried lawmen inspired by the likes of gum-chomping Chief Gillespie and chaw-in-cheek, stogie-jawing Sheriffs Joe Higgins, J.W. Pepper, and Buford T. Justice.

In the late 1960s and into the '70s, if a movie involved backwoods folk, outlaws, and moonshine, chances were pretty good there would be a Southern sheriff poking his nose around the still.

Jim Davis (best known as Southfork patriarch Jock Ewing on "Dallas") portrayed the head of a South Carolina clan of moonshiners under pressure to join a rival syndicate, represented by Scott Brady (a familiar tough guy in numerous westerns and gangster pictures) in "The Road Hustlers," directed in 1968 by Larry Jackson, the auteur who made "Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers."

It's an odd choice for a movie lobby card, but...1968's "The Road
Hustlers" provided an early film role - as a federal agent - for Bill
McKinney, who would achieve cinema notoriety as the mountain
man shish-kabobbed by Burt Reynolds' arrow in "Deliverance."

The ineffectual sheriff in "The Road Hustlers" was played Andy Devine, a character actor whose girth and distinctive squeaking, whiny voice made him an ideal comedic sidekick in several westerns.

But speaking of "Deliverance," we would be remiss if didn't mention that movie's addition to cinema's most notorious Southern sheriffs. In a brief but memorable performance as Sheriff Bullard, James Dickey, the author of Deliverance himself, flashed one of those clichéd, Southern hospitality grimaces and uttered the chilling antithesis to "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" as he told Jon Voight and Ned Beatty:

"Don't ever do nothin' like this again. Don't come back up here."

Three bootlegging sisters take on a gang of homicidal hillbilly-hating bikers in the 1970 exploitation flick "The Girls from Thunder Strip."

Jody McCrea, the son of veteran cowboy actor Joel McCrea ("Ride the High Country") who established a dim-witted presence as a character called "Deadhead" in the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach movies of the '60s (he was, in fact, the only actor in those movies who could actually surf), was the protagonist of the film, while radio's "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem popped up as a revenuer who hunts down moonshiners alongside the local yokel, a sheriff portrayed by veteran character actor Jack Starrett.

On the one hand, Jack Starrett made a name for himself as the director of such exploitation pictures as "Run Angel Run," "Nam's Angels," "Slaughter," and "Cleopatra Jones." On the other hand, as an actor, Starrett often appeared as a variety of bullying law officers.

Deputy Fred (Jack Starrett) wields a big stick when intimidated
by biker Jeremy Slate's kitschy shades in "The Born Losers" (1968).

Almost 15 years later, Starrett is still swinging that big stick,
this time as Deputy Galt in 1982's "First Blood."

As if being brutalized by sadistic deputies wasn't enough of a bad day for John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) in "First Blood," the Vietnam veteran becomes embroiled in an all-out war with the bullheaded county mounty (Brian Dennehy).

It should be noted that Brian Dennehy's character in "First Blood"
is a sheriff in Washington state, not the Deep South.

Just a year following Oscar talk for Burt Reynolds' atypical breakout dramatic role as quintessential sportsman Lewis Medlock in 1972's ""Deliverance," he reverted back to the simplistic good ol' boy persona as affable moonshiner Gator McKlusky in 1973's "White Lightning." The typically good-natured Ned Beatty (Burt's luckless paddle-partner in the aforementioned "Deliverance") was cast as the menacing Arkansas sheriff who murdered Gator's kid brother.

Supposedly set in Georgia but obviously filmed in southern California, 1976's "Dixie Dynamite" was about two sisters who seek revenge when their moonshining father is killed by a crooked deputy. Warren Oates, as a scruffy motocross racer, comes to their aid. Steve McQueen, who was slumming after "The Towering Inferno," anonymously performed Oates' dirt bike stunts.

The duplicitous sheriff in "Dixie Dynamite" was portrayed by chiseled action star Christopher George (best known as Sgt. Troy on TV's "The Rat Patrol" in the late 1960s).

Christopher George and Wes Bishop (who also produced and co-wrote
the film) play corrupt law officers in "Dixie Dynamite."

Susan Howard (best known for playing Donna Krebbs on "Dallas"), Maureen McCormick (Marcia on "The Brady Bunch"), and Claudia Jennings (1970 Playboy Playmate of the Year and star of 1974's "'Gator Bait") portrayed three feisty sisters who take over their murdered father's still in "Moonshine County Express," a 1977 drive-in feature from Roger Corman's New World Pictures.

William Conrad (the portly star of "Cannon" and "Jake and the Fatman") did a turn as the villainous rival moonshiner, while John Saxon breezed through the picture as an errant booze runner. The sheriff was played by Albert Salmi, a familiar face in numerous western movies and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s who most contemporary filmgoers recognize as young Michael O'Keefe's pop in "Caddyshack."

This is actually a picture of Albert Salmi
as the sheriff in the cheesy sci-fi thriller
"Empire of the Ants" (released the same
year as "Moonshine County Express").

"Moonshine County Express" was directed by Gus Trikonis, an actor-singer turned director (he portrayed "Indio," one of the Sharks gang in "West Side Story") who happened to be Goldie Hawn's first husband. Studio head Roger Corman, who recalled Trikonis as one of the best young directors he had ever worked with, thought this film became popular because it didn't put down Southerners.

Producer Roger Corman was also responsible for 1981's "Smokey Bites the Dust," an in-name-only rip-off of "Smokey and the Bandit," directed by Charles B. Griffith, who wrote the screenplays of "The Little Shop of Horrors" and "A Bucket of Blood" for Corman. Our least favorite McNichol - not Kristy but big brother Jimmy - steals a lot of cars and leads dumb cops in several chases. The sheriff was portrayed by Walter Barnes, a stocky actor who appeared in a few Clint Eastwood pictures, including roles as a cowardly sheriff in "High Plains Drifter" and a sadistic sheriff in "Bronco Billy."

Walter Barnes shoves aside Roger Corman stock company player
Dick Miller (in the plaid jacket) in "Smokey Bites the Dust."

Like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Smokey Bites the Dust," the 1979 comedy series "B.J. and the Bear," starring Greg Evigan as an itinerant trucker with a pet chimpanzee, capitalized on the CB radio craze that was also popularized in the hit novelty song "Convoy." Evigan's occasional antagonist was Elroy P. Lobo, a crooked Georgia sheriff. Initially depicted by veteran tough-guy actor Claude Akins as a corrupt opportunist, the character became a somewhat reformed con man with misfired get-rich-scams on his spin-off series, "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo," which aired for two seasons until 1981.

(Left) Greg Evigan poses with Claude Akins on the set of "B.J. and
the Bear." (Right) Mills Watson plays buffoonish stooge Deputy
Perkins, while Brian Kerwin portrays honest but naive Deputy
"Birdie" Hawkins on "The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo."

Also in 1981, Theodore J. Flicker, a former improvisational comedian who wrote and directed the droll political satire "The President's Analyst" (1967), starring James Coburn, directed "Soggy Bottom, U.S.A.," an unassuming redneck comedy featuring Don Johnson (three years before "Miami Vice"), P. J. Soles (the same year as "Stripes"), Dub Taylor, Ann Wedgeworth, Lois Nettleton, Anthony Zerbe, Jack Elam, and an extremely flatulent hound dog. Ben Johnson (pictured below, with Dub Taylor) starred as the wily sheriff who tries to maintain peace and order amongst the bucolic oddballs.

The retro 1996 made-for-Showtime movie "Moonshine Highway" was a throwback to pictures made decades earlier, with Kyle McLachlan (best known as the pie-loving FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper on "Twin Peaks") as a World War II veteran who smuggles illegal corn whiskey and falls in love with the wife of the corrupt sheriff, played by Hollywood oddball Randy Quaid. Former car racer and longtime movie stunt driver-stunt coordinator Andy Armstrong directed the picture, which is set in middle America but was filmed in Canada.

Canadian television actress Maria del Mar plays the tempting
wife of an ornery Randy Quaid in "Moonshine Highway."

In the granddaddy of all moonshiner movies, 1958's "Thunder Road," starring Robert Mitchum (who also produced and co-wrote the picture, as well as writing and singing the film's theme song), Robert's lookalike son, James Mitchum, played Robert's kid brother. Several years later, James Mitchum starred in "Moonrunners" (filmed in 1973 but released two years later), portraying one of two cousins who run bootleg liquor for their Uncle Jesse, while staying one step ahead of Sheriff Rosco Coltrane. Uncle Jesse was played by Arthur Hunnicutt, a grizzled actor known for a string of rural roles, including one of the later "Ma and Pa Kettle" comedies.

Writer-director Gy Waldron based his script on the life and reminiscences of ex-moonshiner Jerry Rushing, who appeared in the movie as a heavy at the Boar's Nest bar. Waylon Jennings narrated the picture as The Balladeer. If all this sounds familiar, it should, because in 1979, Waldron and Rushing created the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard,"

Character actor Bruce Atkins portrays
Sheriff Rosco Coltrane in "Moonrunners."

Veteran character actor James Best made Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane his own on "The Dukes of Hazzard," gradually transforming the hard-nosed, even sinister, corrupt lawman into a bumbling comic foil for the greedy county commissioner, Boss Hogg, who also happens to be his brother-in-law.

James Best, on the run with his "little fat buddy," Boss Hogg
(Sorrell Booke), portrayed Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane for seven
seasons and in two "Dukes" reunion TV movies.

It should be noted that the résumé for venerable character actor Denver Pyle, who personified Uncle Jesse on "The Dukes of Hazzard," included the role of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde," featuring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as glamorized versions of the homicidal Depression-era thugs.

In the film, Bonnie and Clyde are depicted abducting an
embarrassed Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle) and forcing him
to pose for humiliating photographs before releasing him.

In real life, Frank Hamer (pictured below), a living legend among Texas Rangers, was never detained by the gang, but he did orchestrate and lead the May 23, 1934 ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, that left Bonnie and Clyde's corpses riddled with 25 to 50 bullet holes each.

But we digress. When "The Dukes of Hazzard" was retooled for the big screen as an action comedy in 2005, directed by Broken Lizard's Jay Chandrasekhar and starring Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott, with Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg, Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse, and Junior Brown as The Balladeer, the role of Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane went to M.C. Gainey (pictured below, with Burt Reynolds), a menacing presence moviegoers might recall as "Swamp Thing" in "Con Air."

The 2007 direct-to-video prequel "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning" cast popular comedic actor Harland Williams as Rosco (pictured below).

Hey, look who popped up on the original "Dukes of Hazzard" series - Clifton James guest-starred as Sheriff Lester Crabb in a January 1980 episode (pictured below).

So it might seem that Clifton James never completely eluded the snare of typecasting. We are reminded of another actor from two other of Roger Moore's James Bond films, Richard Kiel, who was forever associated with his role as the metal-toothed henchman "Jaws" in "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker." No matter what he's acted in since "Happy Days" ("Arrested Development," "Parks and Recreation," "Childrens Hospital") or produced (139 episodes of "MacGyver"), Henry Winkler will always be The Fonz, just as Mark Hamill (never mind the voice of the animated Joker) will always be Luke Skywalker, and the previously mentioned Bill McKinney, despite a number of roles in Clint Eastwood pictures (notably as "Redlegs" in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), will always be the hillbilly who sodomized Ned Beatty in "Deliverance."

"Happy Gilmore" was a nice try, Richard Kiel,
but where are the chrome dentures?

...Jason Statham will always open a can of whoop-ass, Morgan Freeman will always be sagacious, Steve Buscemi will always be a weirdo, and Samuel L. Jackson will always be a badass who shouts a lot. We're not even going to get to Jennifer Aniston and Michael Cera. And did you ever hear about any further film roles for David C. Billodeau or Johnny David, the guys in the pickup truck who shot Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider"?

On a serious note, Clifton James continued delivering exceptional performances in roles other than Southern sheriffs. In 1975, James reunited with his "David and Lisa" director, Frank Perry, to play a Montana rancher plagued by modern-day cattle rustlers Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston in "Rancho Deluxe," a quirky comedy-drama scripted by Thomas McGuane, who later wrote the screenplays for the revisionist western "The Missouri Breaks," starring Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen's final western, "Tom Horn."

Nouveaux riche ranchers John and Cora Brown (Clifton James and
Elizabeth Ashley) owned a beauty parlor in Schenectady, New Jersey.

The eclectic supporting cast in "Rancho Deluxe" included Slim Pickens as a deceptively doddering stock detective, Harry Dean Stanton and Richard Bright as dense ranch hands Curt and Burt, and Patti D'Arbanville as the untamed daughter of a horse rancher.

Clifton James seemed to excel particularly under the tutelage of independent filmmaker John Sayles, who directed the actor in three motion pictures. In 1988's "Eight Men Out," a dramatization of baseball's Black Sox scandal when a number of players on the Chicago White Sox conspired with racketeers to throw the 1919 World Series, James portrayed notoriously stingy White Sox owner Charles "Commy" Comiskey, who doled out substandard salaries, made his players launder their own uniforms, and "rewarded" his team's clinching the 1919 pennant with a case of flat champagne.

The excellent ensemble cast of "Eight Men Out"
featured John Cusack, John Mahoney, Christopher Lloyd,
Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn, D.B. Sweeney, Michael
Rooker, with writer Studs Terkel and director John Sayles
as Hugh Fullerton and Ring Lardner, two Chicago
sportswriters who uncovered the scandal.

In 1996, Clifton James portrayed the mayor of a Texas border town (pictured below) in writer-director John Sayles' contemporary mystery "Lone Star," with Chris Cooper, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, and Elizabeth Peña.

John Sayles assembled another ensemble cast for 2002's "Sunshine State," a comedy-drama set in coastal northern Florida, featuring Angela Bassett, Edie Falco, Jane Alexander, Timothy Hutton, Mary Steenburgen, and Miguel Ferrer.

"Sunshine State" offered a modern twist on the ancient Greek chorus in the persons of a golfing foursome (pictured above) played by comedian Alan King (in his penultimate screen role before succumbing to lung cancer in 2004), Eliot Asinof (a baseball writer best known for authoring the book on which "Eight Men Out" was based), Clifton James, and actor Cullen Douglas.

In 2011, John Sayles was in Portland, Oregon, when he coincidentally ran into Clifton James inside Powell's City of Books. Sayles posted the picture below on the internet.

"Look who's here!" John Sayles (above) wrote. "We were so happy
to see him that we forgot to get his contact information. Anybody
out there know where Cliff is?"

Postscript:

On hearing the news of Clifton James' passing, Roger Moore, who himself died of cancer just over five weeks later, tweeted, "Terribly sad to hear Clifton James has left us. As J.W. Pepper he gave my first two Bond film a great, fun character."

James' family knew that the actor was most proud of his work on the stage. He loved working in theater in New York City during the prime of his career.

In 1981, Al Pacino, Clifton James, and Thomas Waites
starred in a staging of David Mamet's "American Buffalo."

Clifton's daughter, Lynn James, said some of his ashes would be spread in New York, where his wife's ashes were scattered, and the rest would be spread in the Clackamas River in Oregon, where he enjoyed swimming as a boy.

In a 1980 photo, Clifton James and his wife and six children
enjoy his beloved Clackamas River.

Lynn remarked, "He was the most outgoing person, beloved by everybody. I don't think the man had an enemy. We were incredibly blessed to have him in our lives."