Actor James Coburn Really Old-Fashioned Sort of Character [archived newspaper article]

 

Jonesboro Sun

Copley News Service

February 9, 1971

By Cima Star

ROME – Between takes, James Coburn paces like a penned-in panther, those incredibly long, lean legs moving in a continual fluid motion.

     He reaches the end of the tiny room where he are shooting a scene from “Duck, You Sucker,” in which he co-stars with Rod Steiger, turns sighs, and begin singing in a slightly off-key deep bass voice, “Any Day Now…”

     Coburn is bored, restless while director Sergio Leone shoots and reshoots every scene of the comedy western from a variety of angles. But when “Action!” is called, he is right in there, giving a thoroughly professional performance. His co-workers think he is the greatest.

     Lunch break comes, and he’s off in a sleek silver Mercedes Benz to a little country trattoria not fare from the studios, and Coburn turns to one of his favorite subjects.

     “Too much of the magic has been taken out of our lives,” he says in a slow, lazy drawl that is half Nebraska, half California. He lights a cigarette and three perfectly shaped rings drift toward the roof of the limousine.

     “You know, Christ was a magician. He had magicians all around Him. Magic was very important in early Christianity, but the early (Roman) Catholics abolished it.”

     The car rolls to a halt, and Coburn extricates himself. His height (6 foot, 3) seems concentrated all in the legs and feet, with long, rangy arms and huge hands in proportion.

     He is very much of the new generation of film star. That face, sometimes described as “Neanderthal handsome,” with its wearily drooping lines, peering blue eyes and oversized teeth, would never have gotten near a leading lady in Hollywood’s golden era. Now, it’s a seventies-style sex symbol, and its owner has the seventies-style cool, and the youth culture attitudes, to match.

     Except, that when you listen to what he is saying, he begins to sound like an old-fashioned, 19^th Century romantic.

     Coburn believes in magic, in Eastern philosophies, in astrology, in the wonders of the occult. He dresses in the classic hippie manner, either carefully scruffy or elegantly kaftaned. His pepper-colored hair is shaggy and he tends to slouch.

     A sometime vegetarian, he orders a plate of spaghetti, grilled chicken, and white wine.

     “It’s difficult to stick to a vegetarian diet in Europe,” he says. “You can’t get the right vegetables here, and you end up eating too much starch.

     “Besides, it was just and experiment. I was a vegetarian for seven years.”

     Coburn does not necessarily believe in going all out for anything. “I think too many people worry themselves sick by trying to over-analyze themselves or fit themselves into a particular niche.

     He eats slowly, like he talks, pausing between sentences and mouthfuls, sometimes staring off into the distance. Whether or not Coburn really lives on a higher, airier level, is only for him to know, but he does have a noticeably calm, self-contained manner.       

     He always did go about his life quietly. From the time he seriously decided to become and actor, in the early ‘50s, when he enrolled in Los Angeles City College after his discharge from the Army, until his jump to stardom in “Our Man Flint,” he worked with the steady doggedness characteristic of his Midwest background.

     With the “Flint” pictures, Coburn became a hero to the youth cult, In turn, he admires the hippies, whom he views in romantic terms as “saintly wanderers, living in self-imposed poverty, in search of their ideals.”

     As much as he may admire the concept of wandering poverty, Jim Coburn does not live the ascetic life himself. On location, he rides around in studio-provided limousines. At home he drives one of his two Ferraris. When he travels, he stays in luxury hotels. He and his wife, Beverly, and their two children, James Coburn IV and Lisa, live in a 22-room Hollywood mansion of which any Establishment star would be proud, and which he obviously loves.

     “My old lady, Beverly, has done the whole place. She has an artist’s eye, and she has turned our home into something fabulous.

     His obvious enjoyment of the accouterments of wealth doesn’t bother Coburn. It is just another example of the fact that he doesn’t fit into niches.

     “I grew up in a materialistic society. I am still contaminated by the conditioning; I am still bound to those things.” He shrugs.

     Also, despite his practice in meditation, his studies of Eastern philosophies, his admiration of work-free wanderers, Coburn follows the old fashioned, hardworking traditions.

     “One of the reasons I have my own production company,” he admits “is that it gives me something to do when I’m, between pictures. I have to work. I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not busy.”

     Colleagues agree that to Coburn, work is the really important thing in his life. “He is basically a philosopher, not a doer,” they say. Whatever he may claim, he is not an activist. He does his real living on the screen, and his career is all-important to him.”