A messy divorce in 1979 from his first wife, Beverly Kelly, was followed by the onset of severe rheumatoid arthritis, which at times left him unable to walk and left one hand permanently gnarled. He became a regular face in Sam Peckinpah westerns, including Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, but his career sagged in the late 1970s as the market for his brand of gruff masculinity declined. He went on to play Derek Flint, a spoof version of James Bond in Our Man Flint in 1966 and In Like Flint the following year. Coburn had few lines, but he made the most of them, and established himself as a brooding screen presence. He made his name in The Magnificent Seven, in which he played a knife-throwing desperado alongside Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. Mr Coburn, the son of a Nebraska mechanic and schoolteacher, made more than 100 films in a 43-year-career, many of which type-cast him as a hardened brawler, although he claimed never to have been in a real fight in his life. "We have lost a great star, a fine actor and a man with a marvellous sense of humour." "He was very happy, very calm," he told journalists.
Mr Elkins said Coburn died at home while listening to music with his wife, Paula Murad. Those two made an impression on generations past, present and future."
"When we were kids, he and I and Steve McQueen hung out together. "There'll never be another like him," said the actor's manager, Hillard Elkins. James Coburn, the classic Hollywood tough-guy who fought his way back from crippling arthritis to win an Oscar in an extraordinary comeback performance, died of a heart attack yesterday in Los Angeles, aged 74.Ĭoburn, together with his close friend Steve McQueen, defined a new brand of macho cool in films such as The Magnificent Seven in 1960 and The Great Escape in 1963.
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