Don Pedro Colley lives in Oregon, in an A-frame house his father built in the 1960s. Adding to his quality of life: a six-foot in diameter hot tub he built himself in the 1980s from California Redwood. No wonder he retreats to this oasis and only does a few of these kinds of appearances a year nowadays.

Colley has some interesting credits to his ... er, credit! Notably, he was one of the telepathic beings living "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." He did some spins on "Night Gallery," "The Bionic Woman," "Starsky and Hutch," "Fantasy Island" and the like. But perhaps he's best known as the stern, lumbering Sheriff Ed Little -- the right arm of the law in Chickasaw County -- on the 1980s "The Dukes of Hazzard." I got to find out more about how that whole Sheriff Little thing came about.

It was a 1967 episode of "Daktari" -- his very first screen credit -- that laid the groundwork. In the episode, "Killer Tribe," Colley was guest-starring as tribesman Mtola in "chest-high weeds." In one action-packed scene, he says, "I slide down the embankment, roll over, and the camera turns and sees what's chasing me." Things didn't go quite as planned, though, but the classically trained Colley improvised with the logistics and saved the scene.  

Years later, he got a call from the show's producer, Leonard Kaufman. "I really didn't have an agent at the time," Colley says. Kaufman began to describe for Colley a part on this one particular little show, "The Dukes of Hazzard," a part that at the time was called Sheriff Lucas. "I never have forgotten what you did for me," Kaufman told him.  

During his audition, Colley burst into the room strongly and took an "ice-cold" Sheriff Little stance. He didn't have the attention of the show's bigwigs, at first, though. They were still looking down at their papers. He waited. He wasn't going anywhere, after all. When one, executive producer Paul Picard, finally looked up and met his "gaze" (to put it politely), "the pen slipped out of his hand, the piece of paper fell on the floor," Colley laughs.  

"After the interview was over, I took off my hat, shook his hand," Colley says. "The interview was over -- I was out of character now."  

That regular gig put Colley's career into a more comfy position, but this is a man with a wealth of experience. He also reminisced with us at Hair Dare about the two-hour episode of "Starsky and Hutch" that he did in 1977, "Starsky and Hutch on Playboy Island," featuring Joan Collins. And later, as our group had dinner after the Saturday of this charity weekend, Colley regaled us with stories of Jack Palance and others from his earlier days in stage productions. Fun, indeed.