He gained more notice as an Australian POW in THE In his third film, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), Coburn only had 11 lines, but his fascinating presence made him stand out in a cast crowded with stars such as Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson. He made his big-screen debut at age 31, as an outlaw annoying Randolph Scott in RIDE LONESOME.
#JAMES COBURN TV#
Coburn served in the army and spent five years in New York, studying acting with Stella Adler, doing plays, working behind the scenes on TV commercials and performing in live TV on STUDIO ONE and GENERAL ELECTRIC PLAYHOUSE.Ĭoburn returned to Los Angeles and appeared in 53 TV episodes from 1959 to 1964-mostly in Westerns-primarily as a villain or sidekick. and then made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse, opposite Vincent Price in BILLY BUDD. James studied acting at Los Angeles City College and U.S.C. James was the son of an auto mechanic and a schoolteacher and the grandson of cigar-chomping, Oscar-winning character actor Charles Coburn.Īt an early age the family moved to Compton, California. He was born in Laurel, Nebraska on the same day in 1928 as his twin brother Robert, who much later taught philosophy at Ohio State.
#JAMES COBURN SERIES#
James Coburn appeared in 94 feature films, 24 TV movies and 73 TV series in his 43-year career. JAGGER, portraying a depraved gigolo-with-a-heart. Coburn could get a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar nom for that nifty performance, as could mesmerizing co-star MICK THE MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS, Coburn was terrific as a dying literary lion who ignores his sexy young wife’s bedroom athletics with the younger writer (Andy Garcia) who helps him with his final novel. In them, he romped through the role of super-spy/great lover/electronics expert/ballet instructor Derek Flint, who saves the world first from a minyan of mad scientists and then from an evil band of brainwashing beauties. The whole country adored Coburn’s wild, sexy, imaginative and howlarious James Bond spoofs OUR MAN FLINT (1966) and IN LIKE FLINT (1967). The audience cheered when Coburn’s shrink-on-the-lam machine-gunned a phone booth and giddily declared, “Everyone hates the phone company!”
Flicker (whose 1964 collaboration with fellow-unknown Buck Henry, THE TROUBLEMAKER, is still one of the funniest films that virtually nobody ever saw.) In Flicker’s flick, Coburn flees foreign spies and finally does battle with earth’s ultimate villain: The Phone Company.
My favorite Coburn coup was the delightful 1966 political satire THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, which he produced and starred in-written and directed by unsung genius Theodore J. With a nomination for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (which he won a Years of creating memorable magic on-camera had finally been rewarded Five years later, I interviewed Coburnīriefly at the Writers Guild Awards (see below), shortly after his 40
#JAMES COBURN MOVIE#
The movie and about what he was doing, as we walked across the street INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, in Westwood, California.
Met the suave, slim, silver-haired, six-foot-three, sensationallyīaritone-voiced icon in 1994, when we were exiting the premiere of I loved the work of super talented, versatile, cooler than anybody actor James Coburn, who died of a heart attack on Novemat age 74, while listening to Ray Coniff music at home with his wife Paula.