Bob Hope referred to Best, as his comedic co-star in The Ghost Breakers (1940), as one of the finest talents he had ever worked with.
He came to Hollywood serving as a chauffeur for a Mississippi white couple on vacation, and decided to stay and seek a career in show business.
In his earliest film appearances, in the early 1930s, if he was given screen credit he was billed as "Sleep 'n' Eat".