In his heyday during the mid-1960s, there wasn't an actor half as hip or as cool as James Coburn. Tall, thin, and with the most wonderfully arrogant, toothy smile in Hollywood, he was America's answer to James Bond. A longtime villain in movies and TV, he was too familiar to audiences in that role to be convincing as the typical good guy, so he played his heroes with a heavy dose of cynicism. James Coburn's screen image was somewhat elusive, and he was not well received during the bulk of the 1970s; he all but disappeared from the screen by the early 1980s.
Although it sometimes appeared as if James Coburn's acting was limited to his mannerisms, he was actually well trained, having studied at USC and with Stella Adler. He made his stage debut in Billy Budd at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. During the mid- to late 1950s, James Coburn was often seen on TV, becoming a familiar villain in prime-time westerns. He broke into movies at the end of the decade in a modest role in the BUDD BOETTICHER–directed RANDOLPH SCOTT western Ride Lonesome (1959).
He continued to play important supporting roles in action pictures throughout the early 1960s, contributing to the success of such films as The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), Charade (1963), and the thwarted SAM PECKINPAH masterpiece, Major Dundee (1965). James Coburn's big break came when he was cast as Derek Flint in a playful, tongue-in-cheek James Bond rip-off, Our Man Flint (1966). The movie was a big hit, largely due to James Coburn's charming of critics and audiences alike with his breezy, cocky interpretation of the hero. The sequel, In Like Flint (1967), wasn't as well realized, although James Coburn was just as much fun to watch as he had been in the first film.
Throughout the latter half of the 1960s, the actor starred in a number of clever, sophisticated movies that fell somewhere between thriller and comedy. The best of them undoubtedly was the suspense/satire The President's Analyst (1967). Among his other ambitious movies during that period were What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966), and Waterhole No. 3 (1967). Unfortunately, most of James Coburn's films from the 1960s seem terribly dated today.
He made a number of poor movies in the late 1960s and early 1970s that crippled his career. In retrospect, however, he had two very good years in the early 1970s, even if audiences didn't come out in great numbers to see his films. He was in Sergio Leone's underrated Duck, You Sucker! (1972), Blake Edwards's excellent medical thriller The Carey Treatment (1972), Sam Peckinpah's fascinating western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), the mostly ignored but very satisfying Herbert Ross whodunit The Last of Sheila (1973), and the fascinating bomb Harry in Your Pocket (1973). After five films of such relatively high quality, the actor should have been able to make a solid comeback, but instead, his career dipped still further. James Coburn was given his last genuinely good role in 1975 when he was teamed with another villain turned hero, Charles Bronson, in Hard Times. The film was well reviewed, but it was essentially seen as a Bronson vehicle.
Except for Sam Peckinpah's intriguing Cross of Iron (1977), James Coburn's later films were generally uninteresting. He even returned to form as a western villain in The Last Hard Men (1976). He was an appealing actor but had no drawing power, so films such as The Baltimore Bullet (1980) and High Risk (1981) went mostly unseen. Silver-haired and distinguished-looking in a rough sort of way by this time, James Coburn all but abandoned the movies, becoming a successful television and radio pitchman for beer and other products.
But James Coburn, who made more than 100 films, later returned to the big screen. During the 1990s he played generally undistinguished roles in such films as Young Guns 2 (1990) and EDDIE MURPHY's remake of The Nutty Professor (1996), but in an incredible performance made while suffering from crippling arthritis, James Coburn won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1999 for his performance in PAUL SCHRADER's film Affliction.
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