James Coburn

James Harrison Coburn III (August 31, 1928 – November 18, 2002) was an American film and television actor who was featured in more than 70 films, largely action roles, and made 100 television appearances during a 45-year career.

Coburn was a capable, rough-hewn leading man, whose toothy grin and lanky physique made him a perfect tough guy in numerous leading and supporting roles in Westerns and action films, such as The Magnificent Seven, Hell Is for Heroes, The Great Escape, Charade, Our Man Flint, In Like Flint, The President's Analyst, Hard Times, Duck, You Sucker!, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Cross of Iron.

James Harrison Coburn III was born in Laurel, Nebraska, on August 31, 1928, the son of James Harrison Coburn II and Mylet S. Coburn (née Johnson).

His father and namesake was of Scots-Irish ancestry and his mother was an immigrant from Sweden.

His father had a garage business in Laurel that was destroyed by the Great Depression.

Coburn was raised in Compton, California, where he attended Compton Junior College.

In 1950, Coburn was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as a truck driver and occasionally a disc jockey on an Army radio station in Texas.

He also narrated Army training films in Mainz, West Germany.

He attended Los Angeles City College, where he studied acting with fellow future actor Jeff Corey under Stella Adler’s tutelage, and later made his stage debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in Herman Melville's Billy Budd.

Coburn's first television appearance was in 1953 on Four Star Playhouse.

He was selected for a Remington Products razor commercial, where he was able to shave off 11 days of beard growth in less than 60 seconds while joking that he had more teeth to show on camera than the other 12 candidates for the part.

"Butch Cassidy" aired in 1958.

Coburn's film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott Western Ride Lonesome.

He soon got a job in another Western, Face of a Fugitive (1959).

He also appeared in dozens of television roles, including, with Roberts, several episodes of NBC's Bonanza.

He appeared twice each on three other NBC Westerns: Laramie with Robert Fuller,Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson, one episode in the role of Butch Cassidy; and The Restless Gun with John Payne in "The Pawn" and "The Way Back", the latter segment alongside Bonanza's Dan Blocker.

Coburn's third film was a major breakthrough for him, as the knife-wielding Britt in The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges for the Mirisch Company.

Coburn was hired on the recommendation of his friend Robert Vaughn.

During the 1960–61 season, Coburn co-starred with Ralph Taeger and Joi Lansing in the NBC adventure/drama series Klondike, set in the Alaskan gold rush town of Skagway.

When Klondike was cancelled, Taeger and Coburn were regrouped as detectives in Mexico in NBC's equally short-lived Acapulco.

Coburn also made two guest appearances on CBS's Perry Mason, both times as the murder victim, in "The Case of the Envious Editor" and "The Case of the Angry Astronaut".

In 1962, he portrayed Col. Briscoe in the "Hostage Child" of CBS's Rawhide.

Coburn had a good role in Hell Is for Heroes (1962), a war film with Steve McQueen.

He followed it with another war film with McQueen, The Great Escape (1963), directed by Sturges for the Mirisches, where Coburn played an Australian POW.

For the Mirisches, Coburn narrated Kings of the Sun (1963).

Coburn was one of the villains in Charade (1963), starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

He followed that role playing a glib naval officer in Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily, replacing James Garner, who had moved up to the lead role when William Holden withdrew from the production.

As a result, Coburn was signed to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox.

Coburn had another excellent supporting role as a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965), directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston.

At Fox, he was second-billed in the pirate film A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), supporting Anthony Quinn in the lead role.

He had a cameo in the black comedy The Loved One (1965).

Coburn became a genuine star following the release of Fox's James Bond parody film Our Man Flint (1966), playing super agent Derek Flint.

It was a solid success at the box office.

He followed it with What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), a wartime comedy from Blake Edwards, which was made for the Mirisches; Coburn was top billed.

It was a commercial disappointment.

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) was a crime movie made at Columbia.

Back at Fox, Coburn made a second Flint film, In Like Flint (1967), which was popular, but Coburn did not wish to make any more movies in that series.

In 1998, Coburn won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.

In 2002, he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries nomination for producing The Mists of Avalon.

During the New Hollywood era, he cultivated an image synonymous with "cool".