A Quick Tribute to “Redneck Sheriff” Clifton James

You probably don’t know the actor by name, but if you’ve watched many movies or much TV in the mid- to late twentieth century, you know his face and his voice. For me, his most memorable role was Carl the floorwalker in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke, where he yelled “First bell!” and “Last bell!”  Among other Southern movies from the 1960s and ’70s, he was also in Black Like Me, The Chase, The Reivers, tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . , WUSA, and Buster and Billie. However, his most famous Southern character might have been JW Pepper, the “redneck sheriff” in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, a role he reprised in The Man with a Golden Gun the following year. In the 1980s, typecasting could be what led James to roles in Southern TV shows like The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas.

I was surprised to learn that Clifton James was not from the South but from Spokane, Washington. Born in May 1920, James was a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific and was awarded several medals. He graduated from the University of Oregon and from the Actor’s Studio, then began his career on Broadway and in TV westerns like Bonanza and Gunsmoke. I’ve never been a fan of James Bond movies so I was surprised to see so much emphasis on that when I was reading about him. Clifton James’s portly build and thick jowls combined with a killer scowl, an ominous smile, and thoroughly believable cigar-chomping made him a natural for playing the redneck we love to hate. Somehow a decorated war veteran from the Pacific Northwest figured out how to pull that off convincingly.

In 1966’s The Chase, the most recent Southern Movie I wrote about, his character is Lem, a minor character, one of a trio of town assholes. Lem has greasy hair and a mustache, and wears a baby blue suit and loosened tie. He is the initial eavesdropper who hears Sheriff Calder on the phone then shares the news of Bubber’s escape without permission. Later, Lem causes commotion by shooting his pistol indiscriminately during a party, then he and his drunk friends try to lynch a black man named Lester in an alley, before imprisoning the sheriff in his own office and beating him up severely. Clifton James plays this part perfectly. 

Clifton James died in April 2017, at age 96, from “complications of diabetes,” his New York Times obituary reported. The local newspaper from the area where he grew up also published a nice tribute to him at the time of his death, calling him a “hometown hero.”