James Coburn played Derek Flint in two Flint movies
Want to know the best James Coburn movies? How about the worst James Coburn movies? Curious about James Coburn box office grosses or which James Coburn movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which James Coburn movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
One of my father’s all-time favorite movie scenes occurred in 1963’s The Great Escape. In that movie James Coburn (1928-2002) played an escaped POW during World War II who is hiding in plain sight at a French cafe. Since YouTube is so awesome I was able to locate and attach my dad’s favorite The Great Escape scene at the bottom of this page. This attached scene is why Coburn became one of my favorite actors. When I started writing these movie pages….Coburn was one of the first people I wrote down on a list of actors/actresses that I wanted to write about.
Since writing that original list, 4 and a half years have passed and I have written over 250 movie pages….yet I never did a Coburn movie page. But why?Although Coburn appeared in many classic movies….The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Charade, Our Man Flint and Duck You Sucker….he has also appeared in his fair share of clunkers. When going through his IMDb credits I counted over 20 movies (many turned out to be straight to VHS movies) that I had not even heard of before…. and I consider myself a James Coburn fan. So the other day when I was looking at my Michael Caine (another favorite of mine) page….I saw all of his clunkers ….and thought why am I holding the clunkers against Coburn and nobody else? At that point I decided to give Mr. Coburn some Ultimate Movie Rankings love. His IMDb page shows 174 acting credits from 1957-2002. This page will rank James Coburn movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, cameos, movies not released in North America and straight to home entertainment movies were not included in the rankings.
Mel Gibson and James Coburn in 1994’s Maverick
James Coburn Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
James Coburn Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
Sort James Coburn movies by co-stars
Sort James Coburn movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
Sort James Coburn movies by yearly domestic box office rank
Sort James Coburn movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each James Coburn movie received and how many Oscar® wins each James Coburn movie won.
Sort James Coburn movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews, and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
1. James Harrison Coburn III was born on August 31, 1928 in Laurel, Nebraska. Coburn was raised in California. 2. James Coburn’s rise to stardom…Cliff Notes style. While in the Army he narrated Army training films. Studied acting at Los Angeles City College. Made stage debut in Billy Budd. Selected for a Remington Products razor television commercial. Starting getting television role work in 1957. First movie role was in 1959’s Ride Lonesome. From 1960 to 1965 appeared in supporting roles in many popular movies. In 1966, Coburn became a genuine star following the release of Our Man Flint. In 1967, he was voted the twelfth biggest star in Hollywood. 3. Even though James Coburn was one of The Magnificent Seven (1960)….he only had 11 lines in the entire movie. Coburn was a big fan of Seven Samurai (1954) and his favorite role in that film was the character that he ended up playing in the Americanized version. 4. In 1979, James Coburn started suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis, which left him debilitated at times. In 1998, a holistic healer started him on a dietary supplement, which resulted in a drastic improvement in his condition. This is why he has so few IMDb credits in the 1980s. 5. James Coburn received 1 Oscar® and 0 Golden Globe® nominations…..but he made that 1 nomination count as he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for 1997’s Affliction. 6. James Coburn’s passions in life included martial arts, card playing and enjoying fine Cuban cigars! Coburn and Steve McQueen were a pallbearers at the funeral of Bruce Lee. 7. James Coburn starred in 3 Sam Peckinpah directed movies. 1965’s Major Dundee, 1973’s Pat Garret & Billy The Kid and 1977’s The Cross of Iron. 8. James Coburn was married twice; first to Beverly Kelly from 1959 to 1979..they had two children, James Coburn IV and Lisa Coburn. James Coburn IV is a sound mixer with over 40 IMDb credits. His second marriage was to actress Paula O’Hara from 1993 until his death in 2002. 9. James Coburn was offered the role in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars….but he turned it down. That was good news for Clint Eastwood. Later Coburn would make a Sergio Leone western…1971’s Duck You Sucker…which is also known as A Fistful of Dynamite. 10. James Coburn’s last acting role was on the HBO series….Arli$$. The name of the episode was The Immortal….seems like a fitting way for Coburn to end his acting career. Check out James Coburn’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page. Another page worth checking out is this James Coburn Movie Posters page written by Steve Lensman. Lots of great art work on Coburn’s movies.
Hello Bruce. Thanks for updating your James Coburn page. I have seen nearly all of his films. I love “Ride Lonesome”, “The Magnificent Seven”, “Charade”, “The Great Escape”, “The Americanization of Emily”, “Major Dundee”, “A High Wind in Jamaica”, “Our Man Flint”, “The President’s Analyst” ( my favorite Coburn Performance ), “Duck You Sucker” (my second favorite Coburn performance), “Pat Garrett and billy the Kid”, and “Bite the Bullet”. It’s always a pleasure to visit your website. Thanks again.
Hey Lyle…thanks for checking out our Coburn page. The movies you listed that you like pretty much covered his greatest hits. I think the only one I like a lot that is not listed is The Last of Sheila. His Oscar winning performance in Affliction is good….but that movie is not a movie begging to be rewatched. Thanks for the nice words about our website.
1 Couldn’t resist diving into and then commenting on the update of this very likeable actor.
2 Your summary of the development of his career reminded me that Lee Marvin followed a similar path through supporting roles before making the Big Time and indeed in those days each supported Randolph Scott in an entry in the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott classic western series cinematic series, Lee in Seven Men from Now [1956] and James in Ride Lonesome [1959].
3 Very loosely related to this information is that Seven Men from Now was produced by the Duke’s Batjac Company which made several of Big John’s own westerns and The Green Berets so there you have the dots joining up three great stars who were active to one degree or another in the classic era.
4 I have mentioned before that James Coburn was the actor who publicly accused the major film companies of “creative accounting” when they forced him into a lawsuit to obtain his contracted modest quarter percent share of the profits of Candy (1968) on the pretext that the film had not made any money, whereas you have shown above that it had a respectable domestic gross, and it is in fact the kind of movie usually likely to have done OK abroad.
However the fact that just two years after Derek Flint James could command a profit share in a major production also starring the likes of Burton/Brando/Matthau shows how fast he had risen up the Hollywood actors ranks.
Hey Bob..
1. I agree. Marvin and Coburn mirrored each other in many ways. From supporting actors to lead actors to Oscar winners to sadly early deaths….especially compared to some one like Kirk Douglas who is almost 100.
2. It would seem that Coburn should have been in a movie with Wayne since they had 20 years of making movies in the same time frame.
3. Coburn might not have worked with Wayne but he has some great ones that he did work with Grant, McQueen, Audrey H., Heston, Fonda, and many more.
4. Yep he reached the peak of movie power…..but his stay there was sadly pretty short…pretty much after the Flint movies he went back to supporting roles or lead roles in movies made outside Hollywood.
Thanks for checking out our Coburn update.
Good reply Bruce – thanks. Just picking up some miscellaneous points from the various recent exchanges we’ve been having:
1 COBURN. I don’t think you essentially need more than 11 lines if you’ve been allocated a scene like the gun v knife one in Magnificent Seven which James beautifully underplayed and in which if my memory is correct he uttered just 2 of those 11 lines – “You lost!” The ‘loser’ Robert Wilke was one of my dad’s fave supporting western villains
2 LOREN/BRANDO BILLING DISPUTE Bud won but to an extent it was a hollow victory because whilst, as the Wikipedia reproduction shows, posters for Countess from Hong Kong were changed after Godpop the posters that promoted the release of Countess back in 1967
all read:
CHARLES CHAPLIN
presents
MARLON BRANDO and SOPHIA LOREN
in
A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG
So who ended up with top billing? !! Also of course the movie was a great flop
3 AFI LEGENDS LIST. Power WAS in the running. To draw comments AFI initially published a trial list which included both Power and for example Alan Ladd but the feedback apparently caused a number of changes as not only were Tyrone and Laddie excluded from the final list but so were a number of other stars on the trial list. I have not recently seen the latter list but it must still reside on the internet somewhere.
4 STEVE Many thanks for giving me the link for his Worldwide Grosses video.
Hey Bob.
1. Coburn and Bronson made their lines count. Too bad Coburn did not have a part in The Dirty Dozen…which Charlie was in all three of those movies….I wish Jimmy had that trivia too.
2. I know when I watched A Countess In Hong Kong …it was because of Chaplin versus Brando or Sophia…..so that billing looks good to me….though it is a very bad swan song for Chaplin.
3. Now that would be an interesting list to see….I can see Power and Ladd battling for a spot…..I will have to do some research on that.
4. Now problem. Steve has 100s of videos but that is one of my favorites.
🙂
I am a big James Coburn fan. He is one of the few studio system era actors whose recent (ie since I was born) I have actually seen a few of them. His presence in a film has always made me interested in watching a film even if normally I wouldn’t watch it or it wasn’t considered a great film. The most recently *made* film I have seen was released the same year he died: Snow Dogs.
I saw Affliction because he was in it.
The James Coburn film I saw the most recently for the first time was The Last of Sheila.
Regarding the comments you and Steve have made: My love of classic films I developed on my own and my taste in actors and genres are entirely my own as well. As far as I know, no one else I know shares the same taste in films I do.
My totals by ranking are:
I have not seen his voice over film Monsters Inc.
The highest ranking film I have seen is Number 1; The Great Escape. I love the scene you attached too.
The lowest ranking film I have seen is 51: Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.
The highest ranking film I have not seen is Number 6: Major Dundee.
I have seen all 5 of his top 5
I have seen 9 of his top 10
I have seen 14 of his top 15
I have seen 16 of his top 20
I have seen 18 of his top 25
I have seen 19 of his top 30
I have seen 23 films overall. I believe that puts me in second place…..
I’ve seen every film he made with Steve McQueen.
After Number 30, the other films I have seen are What Did You Do in the War Daddy?, Young Guns II, Snow Dogs, and Sister Act II.
Movies I watch at least once a year are Charade, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.
Other films I don’t own but see at least once a year include In like Flint and Dead heat on a Merry-Go-Round.
My top 5 James Coburn films are:
Charade
The Great Escape
The Magnificent Seven
In Like Flint
The Americanization of Emily.
Thanks for this long-overlooked page on James Coburn.
Hey Flora…..thanks for the visit.
1. Tally count….Steve 27, Flora 23, and me 22. I think I let Mr. Coburn down…..that is only about 40% of his movies that I have watched. If we got to add in multiple viewings…I have to be close to 100 Coburn movies….but then I pretty you and Steve would be there too.
2. Glad you enjoyed The Last of Sheila…..pretty sure the Anthony Perkins page was a good push for you to finally watch that excellent mystery thriller…I now have movie pages on 3 of the performers from that movie….Mason, Perkins, Coburn…..Pretty sure my record for most pages on one movie is A Bridge Too Far with 8 performers written about. Can’t imagine which movie could top that number.
3. I am sure somebody out there has a movie tastes close to you….I think you and Steve are close….with the exception of Ben-Hur….lol.
4. Glad you like the cafe scene too….that would make my dad happy.
5. Your % always interest me….from 100% to 90% to 93% to 80% to 76% to 63% to 17% for the bottom 23.
6. I have to say I am surprised you have seen Snow Dogs, Young Guns II and Sister Act 2…I have only seen Young Guns 2….so the difference in our tally count is pretty recent movies….and you out scored me…..now that is actually shocking.
7. I have always wanted to see Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round….if only to see Harrison Ford’s first part….but if you watch it once a year I guess it has merits besides Ford’s one line
8. I think our Top 5 are the same….Maverick might get into my Top 5…pushing Emily out of the top 5.
9. Now that I am done with this Coburn page…I am very glad I did wrote….it was one of those things that I kept thinking about and pushing it to the backburner.
10. As always…it is fun talking movies with you.
1 Flora Breen Robison boy have you seen some movies ! How you, Bruce and the rest can keep count amazes me at times. I used to do so but gave up as it depressed me by making me question whether I had spent TOO MUCH time at the movies when I was growing up and would on some occasions go to three different cinemas daily, and as we had double features in those days would watch as many as 6 movies on the day.
2 When I did try some counting I would usually remember a book in which the hero got into a blazing row with his wife and told her that marriage no longer made him feel youthful and that he would love to experience boyhood jubilance again and she snapped back “YOU never had a boyhood. It was used up by Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. THEY got it all !”
3 I suppose though that the positive side of my lifelong addiction to movies is that now that I’m retired I can engage meaningfully with an in formative and entertaining site such as this and keep in contact with knowledgeable people like yourself. Nice to see that you were up to writing a long post again full of interesting information.
Coburn played in two very cult movies for me : Magnificent seven and the Great escape. I don’t know if you know, but Cross of Iron was a real success in Germany. And Duck you Sucker was a big success in France and in Italy while there were not successfull in USA.
Hey laurent…..thanks for the comment. I am right there with you about The Great Escape….I think I watch that movie about once a year. I like Magnificent Seven too but I do not rewatch that one on a regular basis. I think the director of Duck You Sucker (Sergio Leone) and The Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah) really struggled with the movies in Hollywood. Meanwhile their versions did very well overseas…while the edited Hollywood versions were ignored at the box office. I wish I had more international box office numbers for the time period in this movie page. Thanks for sharing that information.
Hi, Bruce.
Love James Coburn in anything.
Take care.
Flora
Hey Flora….I am right there with you….Coburn makes any movie better….thanks for stopping by our latest update.
Hello Bruce. Thanks for updating your James Coburn page. I have seen nearly all of his films. I love “Ride Lonesome”, “The Magnificent Seven”, “Charade”, “The Great Escape”, “The Americanization of Emily”, “Major Dundee”, “A High Wind in Jamaica”, “Our Man Flint”, “The President’s Analyst” ( my favorite Coburn Performance ), “Duck You Sucker” (my second favorite Coburn performance), “Pat Garrett and billy the Kid”, and “Bite the Bullet”. It’s always a pleasure to visit your website. Thanks again.
Hey Lyle…thanks for checking out our Coburn page. The movies you listed that you like pretty much covered his greatest hits. I think the only one I like a lot that is not listed is The Last of Sheila. His Oscar winning performance in Affliction is good….but that movie is not a movie begging to be rewatched. Thanks for the nice words about our website.
1 Couldn’t resist diving into and then commenting on the update of this very likeable actor.
2 Your summary of the development of his career reminded me that Lee Marvin followed a similar path through supporting roles before making the Big Time and indeed in those days each supported Randolph Scott in an entry in the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott classic western series cinematic series, Lee in Seven Men from Now [1956] and James in Ride Lonesome [1959].
3 Very loosely related to this information is that Seven Men from Now was produced by the Duke’s Batjac Company which made several of Big John’s own westerns and The Green Berets so there you have the dots joining up three great stars who were active to one degree or another in the classic era.
4 I have mentioned before that James Coburn was the actor who publicly accused the major film companies of “creative accounting” when they forced him into a lawsuit to obtain his contracted modest quarter percent share of the profits of Candy (1968) on the pretext that the film had not made any money, whereas you have shown above that it had a respectable domestic gross, and it is in fact the kind of movie usually likely to have done OK abroad.
However the fact that just two years after Derek Flint James could command a profit share in a major production also starring the likes of Burton/Brando/Matthau shows how fast he had risen up the Hollywood actors ranks.
5 Comprehensive, enjoyable update Bruce.
BOB
Hey Bob..
1. I agree. Marvin and Coburn mirrored each other in many ways. From supporting actors to lead actors to Oscar winners to sadly early deaths….especially compared to some one like Kirk Douglas who is almost 100.
2. It would seem that Coburn should have been in a movie with Wayne since they had 20 years of making movies in the same time frame.
3. Coburn might not have worked with Wayne but he has some great ones that he did work with Grant, McQueen, Audrey H., Heston, Fonda, and many more.
4. Yep he reached the peak of movie power…..but his stay there was sadly pretty short…pretty much after the Flint movies he went back to supporting roles or lead roles in movies made outside Hollywood.
Thanks for checking out our Coburn update.
Good reply Bruce – thanks. Just picking up some miscellaneous points from the various recent exchanges we’ve been having:
1 COBURN. I don’t think you essentially need more than 11 lines if you’ve been allocated a scene like the gun v knife one in Magnificent Seven which James beautifully underplayed and in which if my memory is correct he uttered just 2 of those 11 lines – “You lost!” The ‘loser’ Robert Wilke was one of my dad’s fave supporting western villains
2 LOREN/BRANDO BILLING DISPUTE Bud won but to an extent it was a hollow victory because whilst, as the Wikipedia reproduction shows, posters for Countess from Hong Kong were changed after Godpop the posters that promoted the release of Countess back in 1967
all read:
CHARLES CHAPLIN
presents
MARLON BRANDO and SOPHIA LOREN
in
A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG
So who ended up with top billing? !! Also of course the movie was a great flop
3 AFI LEGENDS LIST. Power WAS in the running. To draw comments AFI initially published a trial list which included both Power and for example Alan Ladd but the feedback apparently caused a number of changes as not only were Tyrone and Laddie excluded from the final list but so were a number of other stars on the trial list. I have not recently seen the latter list but it must still reside on the internet somewhere.
4 STEVE Many thanks for giving me the link for his Worldwide Grosses video.
BOB
Hey Bob.
1. Coburn and Bronson made their lines count. Too bad Coburn did not have a part in The Dirty Dozen…which Charlie was in all three of those movies….I wish Jimmy had that trivia too.
2. I know when I watched A Countess In Hong Kong …it was because of Chaplin versus Brando or Sophia…..so that billing looks good to me….though it is a very bad swan song for Chaplin.
3. Now that would be an interesting list to see….I can see Power and Ladd battling for a spot…..I will have to do some research on that.
4. Now problem. Steve has 100s of videos but that is one of my favorites.
🙂
Hi, Bruce.
I am a big James Coburn fan. He is one of the few studio system era actors whose recent (ie since I was born) I have actually seen a few of them. His presence in a film has always made me interested in watching a film even if normally I wouldn’t watch it or it wasn’t considered a great film. The most recently *made* film I have seen was released the same year he died: Snow Dogs.
I saw Affliction because he was in it.
The James Coburn film I saw the most recently for the first time was The Last of Sheila.
Regarding the comments you and Steve have made: My love of classic films I developed on my own and my taste in actors and genres are entirely my own as well. As far as I know, no one else I know shares the same taste in films I do.
My totals by ranking are:
I have not seen his voice over film Monsters Inc.
The highest ranking film I have seen is Number 1; The Great Escape. I love the scene you attached too.
The lowest ranking film I have seen is 51: Sister Act II: Back in the Habit.
The highest ranking film I have not seen is Number 6: Major Dundee.
I have seen all 5 of his top 5
I have seen 9 of his top 10
I have seen 14 of his top 15
I have seen 16 of his top 20
I have seen 18 of his top 25
I have seen 19 of his top 30
I have seen 23 films overall. I believe that puts me in second place…..
I’ve seen every film he made with Steve McQueen.
After Number 30, the other films I have seen are What Did You Do in the War Daddy?, Young Guns II, Snow Dogs, and Sister Act II.
Movies I watch at least once a year are Charade, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.
Other films I don’t own but see at least once a year include In like Flint and Dead heat on a Merry-Go-Round.
My top 5 James Coburn films are:
Charade
The Great Escape
The Magnificent Seven
In Like Flint
The Americanization of Emily.
Thanks for this long-overlooked page on James Coburn.
Flora
Hey Flora…..thanks for the visit.
1. Tally count….Steve 27, Flora 23, and me 22. I think I let Mr. Coburn down…..that is only about 40% of his movies that I have watched. If we got to add in multiple viewings…I have to be close to 100 Coburn movies….but then I pretty you and Steve would be there too.
2. Glad you enjoyed The Last of Sheila…..pretty sure the Anthony Perkins page was a good push for you to finally watch that excellent mystery thriller…I now have movie pages on 3 of the performers from that movie….Mason, Perkins, Coburn…..Pretty sure my record for most pages on one movie is A Bridge Too Far with 8 performers written about. Can’t imagine which movie could top that number.
3. I am sure somebody out there has a movie tastes close to you….I think you and Steve are close….with the exception of Ben-Hur….lol.
4. Glad you like the cafe scene too….that would make my dad happy.
5. Your % always interest me….from 100% to 90% to 93% to 80% to 76% to 63% to 17% for the bottom 23.
6. I have to say I am surprised you have seen Snow Dogs, Young Guns II and Sister Act 2…I have only seen Young Guns 2….so the difference in our tally count is pretty recent movies….and you out scored me…..now that is actually shocking.
7. I have always wanted to see Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round….if only to see Harrison Ford’s first part….but if you watch it once a year I guess it has merits besides Ford’s one line
8. I think our Top 5 are the same….Maverick might get into my Top 5…pushing Emily out of the top 5.
9. Now that I am done with this Coburn page…I am very glad I did wrote….it was one of those things that I kept thinking about and pushing it to the backburner.
10. As always…it is fun talking movies with you.
1 Flora Breen Robison boy have you seen some movies ! How you, Bruce and the rest can keep count amazes me at times. I used to do so but gave up as it depressed me by making me question whether I had spent TOO MUCH time at the movies when I was growing up and would on some occasions go to three different cinemas daily, and as we had double features in those days would watch as many as 6 movies on the day.
2 When I did try some counting I would usually remember a book in which the hero got into a blazing row with his wife and told her that marriage no longer made him feel youthful and that he would love to experience boyhood jubilance again and she snapped back “YOU never had a boyhood. It was used up by Clark Gable and Errol Flynn. THEY got it all !”
3 I suppose though that the positive side of my lifelong addiction to movies is that now that I’m retired I can engage meaningfully with an in formative and entertaining site such as this and keep in contact with knowledgeable people like yourself. Nice to see that you were up to writing a long post again full of interesting information.
Best wishes BOBBY
🙂
Coburn played in two very cult movies for me : Magnificent seven and the Great escape. I don’t know if you know, but Cross of Iron was a real success in Germany. And Duck you Sucker was a big success in France and in Italy while there were not successfull in USA.
Hey laurent…..thanks for the comment. I am right there with you about The Great Escape….I think I watch that movie about once a year. I like Magnificent Seven too but I do not rewatch that one on a regular basis. I think the director of Duck You Sucker (Sergio Leone) and The Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah) really struggled with the movies in Hollywood. Meanwhile their versions did very well overseas…while the edited Hollywood versions were ignored at the box office. I wish I had more international box office numbers for the time period in this movie page. Thanks for sharing that information.