A couple of character actor obituaries

James Best died on Monday at the age of 88. You may or may not recognize the name, since he had a long, long career in movies and on TV. One of his earliest movies was in the 1950 version of Winchester '73, and he had small roles in things as diverse as The Caine Mutiny and Forbidden Planet. However, Best will be most remembered for playing the sheriff, Rosco P. Coltrane, on the early 1980s TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. That shows up on one or another cable channel; as for Best's movies, you'll have a chance to catch him in The Raid, coming up again on FXM Retro at 10:30 AM Friday.

Geoffrey Lewis died yesterday at the age of 79. Lewis also had a fairly long career both in the movies, and on TV. Lewis would probably be best remembered for all the movies he did with Clint Eastwood, from at least High Plains Drifter in the early 1970s through to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in the late 1990s. Lewis also appeared as the US Consul to Tangier in The Wind and the Lion.