The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 304

COVER STORY The private world off Boss Hlogg Hazzard County's heavyweight couldn't talk to Sorrell Booke (1 By Colin Datigaard Sorrell Booke speaks French, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and he "fusses" with half a dozen other languages. His idea of a great tt-. ning is to lock himself in his library, crack an encyclopedia and devour ten thousand facts. His only regular exercise Is moving books on and off shelves. But hold it! This is Boss -Hogg we're talking about Jefferson Davis Hogg, to be precise -the diabolically corrupt, fat-chewing political heavyweight of Hazzard County, home of the Duke Boys.

One of the biggest bigots and most nasty nasties on television, up there with J. R. and Archie Bunker. Astonishingly, the jowls are all Sorrell Booke has in common with the white-suited, white-hatted, steam-blowing glutton who fills the screen on "Dukes Hazzard." In reality, he lives In a modest home in a modest street in Los Angeles, where he does his own gardening, loves to play carpenter and, mostly, buries himself in the "very private world" of his own imagination. Futhermore, he thinks Boss Hogg is "despicable," hope I never meet anybody like that.

He is lustful, angry, proud, slothful and greedy. "He grabs power, desperately needing it, yet he can't handle it and it never makes him happy. It simply corrupts him more and more." Why, then, is he so popular that a Boss Hogg spin-off is under consideration? Booke thinks he knows. "Politically and economically, he is based on many people you read about every day in the newspaper, mayors and chiefs of police in small "Maybe," he says, "I was made to live by myself. I have this extensive private life that I don't think I could share with anybody, "Oh, I did have one friend, a man, with whom I could share this.

He was unique, an actor, met him in a play. But he died. I never did find another. He was the only person with whom I could discuss Russian roots." As a star on a hit show -his fans think he is the main attraction Sorrell Booke could live any way he wished. In a mansion, driving Rolls Royces.

But he has rejected that life as surely as he once rejected becoming an intellectual. "I don't want anything like that because I'd have to pay the price," he says. "You have to worry about mansions and fancy cars. They need attention. And for what?" Yet.

true, there are some traits in Sorrell Booke that are magnified In Boss Hogg. "Yes," he admits, "Just yesterday I devoured. a huge bowl of ice cream with nuts, cherries, chocolate drops "But mostly I'm frugal. Look at this house. I do everything myself.

And when I shop, I'm always looking for bargains." At 51, Booke has no desire to climb mountains, sail boats or play golf. "To tell you the truth," he says, "I have enough drama and excitement in my imagination. Learning something, now that's a real thrill." One thing Booke claims to have learned very well is the need in people to sit in their living rooms and watch cars crunch into each other; the "Dukes" crumple cars like they 're. cardboard cut-outs. Booke moves right into his cerebral theories, talking of 'people's "need to rid themselves of their psychological super-ego" and a lust for "stimulation of the id." Boss Hogg would think he was talking an exotic language.

At home in his modest house, Sorrell Booke pursues exotic intellectual interests. towns who seem to have everybody in their pockets. "There are many places, small communities in rural areas, where you can't open a business without paying somebody off. "So. first of all, he is real.

But I also play him very humanly and I am a good actor which makes him funny. He wants more and more and is never satisfied, but it's no good for him. "Kids come up to me and say, 'I just love what you love. What they love is the money. Everybody does." At car, shows across the country.

Booke is mobbed by children; he signs more autographs than any other star In Hollywood. And he loves it. "They get something from me they don't all get at home. A hug. A kiss, a look in the eye.

I spell their names correctly. And I give them wrapped attention. I've arranged it all." Booke has two grown children of his own, a daughter in college and a son In a rock band in New York who visits him frequently. He was 15 years married but has lived alone for eight divorced. ON THE COVER Sorrell Booke plays the part of Boss Hogg on "Dukes of Hazzard." 2.