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.
In his earliest film appearances, in the early 1930s, if he was given screen credit he was billed as "Sleep 'n' Eat".
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.
Perhaps best remembered as Algernon, the comic relief who introduces Humphrey Bogart to the bad luck dog, Pard, in Bogart's star-making role, High Sierra.