American actor (1930?1994)
Sorrell Booke
(January 4, 1930 ? February 11, 1994) was an American actor who performed on stage, screen, and television. He acted in more than 100 plays and 150 television shows,
[1]
and is best known for his role as corrupt politician
Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg
in the television show
The Dukes of Hazzard
.
[2]
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Booke was born in
Buffalo, New York
, the son of Sol Booke, a physician. As a child, he entertained patients in his father's waiting room,
[3]
and began acting on radio at nine.
[1]
As a young radio actor he was known for his impersonations. He won a radio contest for mimicking the voice of Adolf Hitler, and appeared regularly as an actor on local radio stations
WGR
and
WEBR
. He attended
Bennett High School
and was valedictorian of the Class of 1946.
[4]
Booke enrolled in
Columbia University
at 16, and performed in Shakespearean plays in Columbia's drama club. He graduated from Columbia at 19 in 1949, and received a Master of Fine Arts at the
Yale School of Drama
.
[1]
[5]
[6]
He served in the
United States Army
during the
Korean War
for two years as a
counterintelligence
officer.
[2]
[7]
Career
[
edit
]
After his Army service, Booke appeared
off-Broadway
in
The White Devil
and had his first television role in the series
Omnibus
. His
Broadway
debut was in 1956, in Michael Redgrave's production of
The Sleeping Prince
.
[3]
[5]
One prominent early role was that of Senator Billboard T. Rawkins in the 1960 revival of
Finian's Rainbow
.
He also appeared in the films
Black Like Me
,
A Fine Madness
,
What's Up, Doc?
and
Fail-Safe
. In 1962, he starred in the Broadway musical
Fiorello!
as the title character.
Aside from his film roles, he appeared on numerous television shows such as
Gunsmoke
,
Cannon
,
Ironside
,
Route 66
,
Hawaii Five-O
,
The Rockford Files
,
Full House
,
The Guiding Light
and
12 O-Clock High
.
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
He worked as a voice actor in the 1980s and early 1990s. Booke also was a guest conductor at the
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
.
[15]
Booke received an
Emmy
nomination for his appearance in
Dr. Kildare
in the episode "What's God to Julius?". He appeared in an episode of
Mission: Impossible
from the first season in 1966. Booke appeared in two early episodes of
M*A*S*H
, as General Barker in "Requiem for a Lightweight" and "
Chief Surgeon Who?
"; the latter marked the debut of the character
Corporal Klinger
, with whom Booke's character had previously dealt. He also had a recurring role in
All in the Family
as Mr. Sanders, personnel manager at
Archie Bunker
's workplace, Prendergast Tool and Die Company. (He had previously appeared on
All in the Family
as Lyle Bennett, the manager of a local television station.) Booke was featured on an episode of
Good Times
, and had a recurring role as the Jewish mob boss "Lefkowitz" on
Soap
. He also appeared in two episodes of
Columbo
, "Swan Song" in Season 3 (featuring Johnny Cash) and "The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case" in Season 6. In 1976 he played a record producer in
Rich Man, Poor Man Book II
.
Booke's most notable role was in
The Dukes of Hazzard
as
Boss Hogg
, the humorously wicked antagonist to Bo and Luke Duke. The series ran on CBS for seven seasons, from 1979 to 1985. It spawned an animated series,
The Dukes
(1983), two reunion TV specials (by which time Booke had died, and the character of Boss Hogg was also said to be deceased), a
feature film
(2005) and
The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning
(a 2007 TV movie).
By the late 80s, Booke had stopped appearing physically in acting roles, but he continued to perform voice work on several television shows and movies, occasionally as narrator, and sometimes as a cartoon character's voice, in such movies as
Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers
(1987 TV movie),
Gravedale High
(1990 television series), and
Rock-A-Doodle
(1991).
Personal life
[
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]
Booke was 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall and weighed 185 pounds (84 kg) at the time of his Boss Hogg role, and wore padding to seem fatter.
[16]
He copied the Hogg character's
American South
drawl from U.S. senators
Sam Ervin
and
Strom Thurmond
.
[3]
Booke was fluent in
French
,
Latin
,
Japanese
,
Korean
,
Spanish
,
Portuguese
,
Russian
,
Ukrainian
,
Belarusian
,
German
,
Greek
and
Italian
. He said that he also “fussed" with a half-dozen other languages such as
Arabic
,
Mandarin Chinese
,
Dutch
,
Persian
,
Polish
, and
Swedish
. One of his hobbies was moving into and restoring rundown houses. In 1981, he lived in a "modest home on a modest street in Los Angeles," where he did his own gardening and carpentry. He called his Boss Hogg character "despicable," but enjoyed meeting with fans of the show.
[1]
[17]
Booke was married to Miranda Knickerbocker, then a senior at
Barnard College
, in 1958. She was the daughter of journalist
Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker
.
[7]
They had two children before divorcing in 1973.
Death
[
edit
]
On February 11, 1994, Sorrell Booke died of
colorectal cancer
in
Sherman Oaks, California
. He is interred at the Jewish cemetery
Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
in
Culver City, California
.
[3]
[18]
Partial filmography
[
edit
]
Television work
[
edit
]
- The Guiding Light
(1952)
- Brenner
(1959)
- The Iceman Cometh
(1960)
- The Million Dollar Incident
(1961)
- Car 54, Where Are You?
, as Police Commissioner Harper in "How High Is Up?" (1962)
- Route 66
, as Sam Frazier in "Voice at the End of the Line" (1962)
- Naked City
Beyond This Place There Be Dragons
(9 episodes, 1960?1963)
- The Patty Duke Show
, as Gilbert Tugwell in "Block That Statue" (1964)
- Twelve O'Clock High
, as Sgt. Aronson in "Faith, Hope, and Sgt. Aronson" (1965)
- Slattery's People
as Max Rice in "Question: What's a Swan Song for a Sparrow?" (1965)
- New York Television Theatre
(1965)
- T.H.E. Cat
? Episode 1 (1966)
- Mission: Impossible
(1967)
- The Borgia Stick
(1967)
- Ironside
Shell Game
(1968)
- The Wild Wild West
, as Heisel in "The Night of the Egyptian Queen" (1968)
- Hawaii Five-O
- "The Double Wall" (1970)
- Room 222
(one episode 1971) as Mr Bomberg
- All in the Family
(1972-1977) as Joseph Sanders (4 episodes) / Mr. Bennett
- Owen Marshall, Counsellor at Law
(1971)
- M*A*S*H
(2 episodes, 1972) as Gen. Wilson Spaulding Barker
- The Manhunter
(1972)
- Gunshot
(1972)
- Gunsmoke
, in "Milligan" (1972) as Gerald Pandy
- Alias Smith and Jones
(1972)
- Adventures of Nick Carter
(1972)
- Dr. Max
(1974) as Dr. Scott Herndon
- The Last Angry Man
(1974) as Dr. Max Vogel
- The New Dick Van Dyke Show
(1974) as Herbie Vincent / Otto
- Cannon
(1974)
- Columbo: Swan Song
(1974) as J.J. Stringer
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker
(1974) as Mr. Eddy
- Kung Fu
, in "A Dream Within a Dream" (1974) as Sheriff Hodges
- Adventures of the Queen
(1975) as Robert Dwight
- The Streets of San Francisco
(1975) as Quincy Lloyd
- Rich Man, Poor Man Book II
(1976) 5 episodes, as Phil Greenberg
- Brenda Starr
(1976) as A.J. Livwright
- The Bob Newhart Show
(1976) as Mr. Perlmutter
- Hunter
, episode "The Lovejoy Files" (1977) as Mervyn
- Black Sheep Squadron
Episode "Poor Little Lambs" (1977) as Father Phillipe
- Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
(1977) as Rabbi Weintraub
- The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened
(1977) as Samuelson
- The Amazing Howard Hughes
(1977) as Fiorello LaGuardia
- Columbo: The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case
(1977) as Bertie Hastings
- Greatest Heroes of the Bible
(1978)
- Soap
(1978) as Charles Lefkowitz
- Good Times
(1978) as Mr. Galbraith
- Little House on the Prairie
(1978) as Mr. Watson
- What's Happening!!
(1978) as Mr. Finley
- The Rockford Files
"The Jersey Bounce" (1978) as Wade G. Ward
- Bigfoot and Wildboy
(1979)
- The Dukes of Hazzard
(1979-1985) as Boss Hogg / Jefferson Davis Hogg
- The Love Boat
(1980) as Lucius Kergo
- The Dukes
(1983) as Jefferson Davis 'Boss' Hogg (voice)
- Alice
(1983) as Jefferson Davis 'Boss' Hogg
- The Pound Puppies
(1985) as Mayor Fist aka The Mayor (voice)
- Newhart
(1985) as Sheik Fraser
- Crazy Like a Fox
(1986) as Bernard 'Bernie' Sinclair
- You Again?
(1986) as Roger Davidson
- Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers
(1987) as Sheriff Rufus Buzby / T.J. Buzby (voice)
- Yogi and the Invasion of the Space Bears
(1988) as Mountain Bear (voice)
- Full House
Episode "Our Very First Christmas Show" (1988) as Lionel / Santa Claus
- The Smurfs
(1988) (voice)
- Fantastic Max
(1988) (voice)
- Don Coyote & Sancho Panda
(1990) (voice)
- Tom and Jerry Kids Show
(1990) as Announcer (voice)
- Gravedale High
(1990) (voice)
- Civil Wars
(1991) as Charles Previn
- Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation
(1992) as Big Daddy Boo (voice)
- Capitol Critters
(1992) (voice)
- Bonkers
(1993) as Boss Hoss (voice)
- The New Adventures of Captain Planet
(1993) as Sheriff Hebbs (voice)
- Droopy, Master Detective
(voice) (1993)
Stage appearances
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
Cauthorn, Robert S. (February 9, 1984).
"Character Actor Sorrell Booke is High on Hogg Despite it All"
.
Arizona Daily Star
. p. 8
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
– via
Newspapers.com
.
- ^
a
b
Collins, Glenn (February 15, 1994).
"Sorrell Booke, A TV Actor, 64; Was Boss Hogg"
.
The New York Times
.
Archived
from the original on May 13, 2013
. Retrieved
January 31,
2011
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Oliver, Myrna (February 16, 1994).
"Sorrell Booke; TV, Stage and Movie Actor"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
.
- ^
Cichon, Steve (March 22, 2019).
"The curious acquaintance of John Otto and Boss Hogg"
.
The Buffalo News
. Retrieved
March 22,
2019
.
- ^
a
b
"Finally He 'Made It'
"
.
The News Leader
: TV Book
. Staunton, Virginia. November 18, 1979. p. 10 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^
Thomas, Vinciguerra (Spring 2014).
"Varsity Show Endears and Endures"
.
Columbia College Today
. Archived from
the original
on June 21, 2016
. Retrieved
August 1,
2020
.
- ^
a
b
"Miss Knickerbocker Is Wed To Sorrell Booke in Nyack"
(PDF)
.
The New York Times
. September 7, 1958
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
.
- ^
Gunsmoke: Season 18, Episode 9
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
Cannon: Death Chain | TVmaze
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
Ironside : Shell Game (1968) - Anton Leader | Cast and Crew | AllMovie
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
Route 66 : Voice at the End of the Line (1962) - David Lowell Rich | Cast and Crew | AllMovie
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
Hawaii Five-0 : The Double Wall (1970) - Michael O'Herlihy | Cast and Crew | AllMovie
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
The Rockford Files : The Jersey Bounce (1978) - David Chase, Stephen J. Cannell, William Wiard | Cast and Crew | AllMovie
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
Full House : Our Very First Christmas Show (1988) - John Bowab | Cast and Crew | AllMovie
, retrieved
February 13,
2023
- ^
"Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra: Concerts, Biography & News"
.
BBC Music
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
.
- ^
Whitesell, Phil (January 24, 1980).
"It's Sorrell Booke's job to hog all the action"
.
The Tampa Times
. Knight-Ridder News Service. p. 18
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
– via Newspapers.com.
- ^
Dangaard, Colin (June 28, 1981).
"The Private World of Boss Hogg"
.
The Boston Globe
: TV Week
. p. 2
. Retrieved
June 21,
2020
– via Newspapers.com.
- ^
"Obituaries/funeral announcements, Sorrell booke"
.
The Los Angeles Times
. February 15, 1994. p. 140
. Retrieved
July 21,
2020
– via
Newspapers.com
.
External links
[
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]
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International
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