← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Howard Campbell, Jr.
Thread ID: 3588 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2002-11-19
2002-11-19 07:32 | User Profile
Hollywood Actor James Coburn died today, aged 74. He typified a rangy, Nordic maverick which once was an American icon...a glad throwback to the era of Cooper and Gable, when White dignity was still hip.
His Oscar for "Affliction" was arguably the most deserved award the Academy has bestowed in a decade. Other favorite roles were "In Like Flint" and "Charade".
[url=http://us.imdb.com/Name?Coburn,+James]His IMDb Page[/url]
R.I.P., James.
2002-11-19 07:42 | User Profile
And don't forget Britt, knife-wielding samurai in The Magnificent Seven...that's one of my favorite Westerns.
They don't make he-men like they used to. :(
2002-11-19 08:41 | User Profile
I only saw him in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape and he was great in both.
R.I.P.
2002-11-19 14:55 | User Profile
James Coburn was part of a 60s generation of actors, most of whom ended up trapped on television for the remainder of their careers (Robert Culp, Robert Vaughan, Jim Hutton, Clu Gulager, etc). Coburn largely escaped that particular trap, luckily. Yet even though he did some nice work in some good pictures, there always seemed to be gremlins at work on his career trajectory: bad luck, bad timing, bad choices. (Bad agents too, probably.)
If a new studio head, to make himself look better, decided to release his predecessor's projects with zero promo or advtg (in other words, a deliberate tank job) chances are one of them was a Coburn picture. Whenever a noted-but-difficult director had pissed off the Tinseltown pharisees one time too many - and as punishment had his picture re-edited by chimps and sent out to die as a tax writeoff - there would be Coburn, top-billed, again. The unkindest cut: when ABC decided to revive the Flint character for a tv movie, they bypassed Coburn altogether and cast Rod Taylor (another 60s actor who subsequently lost his forward momentum). By the 80s, Coburn had become a pitchman for conspicuous consumption ("Mastercard - I'm bored"), probably his canniest career choice in a decade, sad to say.
Essential Coburn: THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST, WATERHOLE #3, DUCK YOU SUCKER!, CROSS OF IRON, A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA, HARD TIMES, MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. I have a feeling his 'rodeo movie', THE HONKERS, is worth seeing, if only for how rarely it has surfaced since its original release. Can't really recommend CANDY as a 'good' movie, but it is entertainigly awful.
2002-11-19 15:13 | User Profile
My father while traveling in England years ago ran into Coburn and talked with him for a half-hour or so. He said that Coburn was a great guy.
-Z-
2002-11-19 15:50 | User Profile
Alas, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris and now James Coburn. How the ranks of cinema's reel White men are thinning.
2002-11-19 16:08 | User Profile
I first noticed Coburn on Jack lord's excellent Stoney Burke series. He showed up in a couple episodes playing his typical role as a smiling but basically untrustworthy rodeo cowboy.
The next thing I know he turns up in TM7 and boom he's a household name.
How many remember that when Playgirl had Burt Reynolds nude it was Coburn who posed first but was rejected by the editors as unsuitable or unacceptable- read not buff enough.
2002-11-19 22:34 | User Profile
Sad as his recent news appearances have been, Nolte can be a very fine actor as well. FAREWELL TO THE KING, NORTH DALLAS FORTY, MOTHER NIGHT, and - politics aside - UNDER FIRE are all worth catching. I even liked him in EXTREME PREJUDICE, playing a cartoon version of himself.
2002-11-20 04:55 | User Profile
I always liked James Coburn. He was one of the last of the actors who not only portrayed men, they WERE men. He was funny as hell in Waterhole No.3 with Caroll O'Connor & Claude Akins and in the gritty Hard Times with Charles Bronson. Look for tough ol' Alzheimer's-afflicted Charlie to go at any time.
Coburn. Stewart. Mitchum. Scott. Harris: the passing of an era. Sad.