James Coburn - Career

Career

Coburn's film debut came in 1959 as the sidekick of bad guy Pernell Roberts in the Randolph Scott western Ride Lonesome. Coburn also appeared in dozens of television roles including, with Roberts, several episodes of NBC's Bonanza. He appeared twice each on two other NBC westerns Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson, one episode in the role of Butch Cassidy, and The Restless Gun with John Payne in two episodes entitled "The Pawn" and "The Way Back", the latter with Bonanzas Dan Blocker. Coburn and Ralph Taeger co-starred with Joi Lansing in Klondike on NBC in the 1960–1961 season. When Klondike, set in the Alaskan gold rush town of Skagway, 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 Perry Mason, both times as the murder victim in "The Case of the Envious Editor" and "The Case of the Angry Astronaut."

Coburn became well known in the 1960s and the 1970s for his tough guy roles in several action and western films, first primarily with Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson in the John Sturges films The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. Coburn played the parts of a villainous Texan in the hugely successful Charade (1963), a glib naval officer in The Americanization of Emily (1964) and a one-armed Indian tracker in Major Dundee (1965) gained him much notice. In 1966, Coburn became a bona fide star following the release of the James Bond parody film Our Man Flint. In 1967, Coburn was voted the 12th biggest star in Hollywood. In 1971, Coburn starred in the spaghetti western Duck, You Sucker!, directed by Sergio Leone, as an Irish explosives expert and revolutionary who has fled to Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. Coburn teamed with director Sam Peckinpah for the 1973 film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (they had worked together in 1965 on Major Dundee; the film's producer, Jerry Bresler, took editing responsibilities away from Peckinpah during post-production, resulting in Peckinpah's becoming furious over what he claimed was the producer's deliberate sabotage of his film, and he threatened the studio with a lawsuit. Columbia relented--mainly because of a promise made to them by star Charlton Heston that he would never work for the studio again if they didn't let Peckinpah edit the film the way he wanted--and acceded to some of Peckinpah's demands, but the finished product was still not satisfactory to him and he disowned it). Peckinpah and Coburn were greatly disappointed and turned next to Cross of Iron, a critically acclaimed war epic that performed poorly in the U.S. but was a huge hit in Europe. Peckinpah and Coburn remained close friends up until Peckinpah's death in 1984. In 1973, Coburn was one of the featured celebrities dressed in prison gear on the cover of the album Band On The Run made by Paul McCartney and his band Wings.

Coburn returned to television in 1978 to star in a three-part mini-series version of a Dashiell Hammett detective novel, The Dain Curse, tailoring his character to bear a physical resemblance to the author. Due to severe rheumatoid arthritis, however, Coburn appeared in very few films during the 1980s. Although his hands were visibly gnarled in film appearances within the final two decades of his life, Coburn continued working until his death in 2002. Coburn spent much of his life writing songs with British singer-songwriter Lynsey De Paul and doing television series as his work on Darkroom, and claimed to have healed himself with pills containing a sulfur-based compound. Coburn finally returned to film in the 1990s and appeared in supporting roles in Young Guns II, Hudson Hawk, Sister Act 2, Maverick, Eraser, The Nutty Professor, Affliction, and Payback. Coburn's performance of Affliction eventually earned him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.