Sorrell Booke: January 4, 1930 – February 11, 1994 

---

✪ Sorrell Booke was an American actor who performed on stage, screen, and television. He acted in more than 100 plays and 150 television shows over a career spanning more than four decades. He is best known for his role as corrupt politician Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard.

Booke was born in Buffalo, New York on January 4, 1930, the son of Sol Booke, a physician, and showed an early brilliance as a linguistic prodigy and performer. As a child, he entertained patients in his father’s waiting room, and began acting on radio at the early age of nine. As a young radio actor he was known for his impersonations and won a radio contest for mimicking the voice of Adolf Hitler. He would appear regularly as a voice actor on local radio stations WGR and WEBR. He attended Bennett High School and was valedictorian of the Class of 1946 while he was only sixteen years old.

Booke enrolled in Columbia University at 16, training in Shakespearean theater and performing plays in Columbia’s drama club. He graduated from Columbia at 19 years old in 1949, and received a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Yale School of Drama. While at Yale, he once starred in a stage production of Beethoven with Paul Newman Upon his graduation from Yale, Booke postponed the pursuit of his acting career to instead enlist and serve in the United States Army during the Korean War for two years as a counterintelligence officer. Most of the information and details regarding Booke’s service and activities in counterintelligence during the Korean War remain classified.

After his Army discharge, Booke appeared off-Broadway in The White Devil and landed his first television role in the series Omnibus. He made his official Broadway debut in 1956, in Michael Redgrave’s production of The Sleeping Prince. One of his prominent early roles 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! cast as the title character.

Aside from his film roles, Booke also 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.

Booke received an Emmy nomination for his performance in the Dr. Kildare 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 in which 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.

▶️ 20 Minutes 19 Seconds

By the late 1980s, 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.

Booke continued to work as a voice actor well into the 1980s and early 1990s. Booke was also a frequent guest conductor at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

▶️ 49 Seconds

However, 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).

Booke was 5 ft 6 inches tall and weighed 185 pounds at the time of his Boss Hogg role. He wore special costumed padding to appear fatter in the role. He copied and mimiked Boss Hogg’s southern American drawl from U.S. senators Sam Ervin and Strom Thurmond.

Booke was fluent multiple foreign languages including English, French, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, and Italian. He said he also “fussed” around with a half-dozen other languages such as Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Dutch, Persian, Polish, and Swedish. One of his favorite 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 referred to his Boss Hogg character “despicable,” but greatly enjoyed meeting fans of the show.

In 1958, Booke married Miranda Knickerbocker, then a senior at Barnard College. They had two children before divorcing in 1973.

Sorrell Booke died from complications of colorectal cancer in Sherman Oaks, California on February 11, 1994. He is interred at the Jewish cemetery Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.✪