OK, so ... There we are the other night, all enraptured watching Johnny Cash play the tough rural Georgia sheriff Lamar Potts in 1948, in fervent pursuit of Andy Griffith's evil mobster boss John Wallace in "Murder in Coweta County" (that's ki-eta, by the way -- the name doesn't moo). Tall, handsome, hardened Johnny Cash ... Ahhhhh ... We loved the man and everything he stood for. Anyway ... Griffith is in a car chase, and who's driving his car but ... Jerry Rushing? Well, it sure looks like him!
We check the IMDb (aka, "the oracle," according to our bro), and sure enough, that's our man behind "The Dukes of Hazzard" who's behind the wheel in that scene of the 1983 TV movie, based on a true story. It seems rather appropriate, since Griffith's Wallace makes a reference to "revenuers" a few scenes before. Rushing's character, Herring Sevill, ends up in the cell right next to Wallace's, and Herring gets increasingly nervous about his obligations to the sinister country mobster.
It's out-of-the-way Meriwether and Carrollton, Georgia, where this action takes place. So wonderful to see homespun Andy Griffith showing his range with a evil turn, and so wonderful to see Jerry Rushing in one of his roles, just a few years after he helped create "The Dukes" and guest-starred in the 1979 "Dukes" episode "Repo Men."
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