An American actor, he was born in Powderly, Kentucky, on July 26, 1926. James was married three times, and had three children. In the 1970s, he founded a school to teach actors motion picture technique, and he also taught drama for more than 25 years. He's known for The Killer Shrews (1959), Shenandoah (1965), and the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985). He died in 2015 of complications from pneumonia, at age 88.