James Coburn, King of Cool

James Coburn

Actor James Coburn, who’d last been seen “shacked up in Greenwich Village,” managed to borrow the money to get himself to L.A. after his college buddy Robert Vaughn convinced director John Sturges that Coburn would be perfect for a role the director was desperate to fill in a film called “The Magnificent Seven.”

“Coburn used his first big paycheck from the picture to buy a brand-new sports car,” Vaughn recalled. They drove it to a double date in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at “a local dive called Las Manaitas.”

“At the door of the restaurant, a red-vested valet, all bows and smiles, took Jimmy’s car,” Vaughn wrote. “I was nervous about this — we weren’t in L.A. — after all, but in semi-lawless Cuernavaca. Jimmy laughed at me, and all seemed well when we came back out after an evening of merrymaking. Jimmy handed over five hundred pesos, and the valet scurried off into the midnight darkness to fetch the car. In a few moments, we saw headlights rushing toward us.

“’Isn’t he going awfully fast?’ I exclaimed. As we scrambled for safety, the car roared past us and smashed into the wall of the restaurant, not 20 feet away. The women screamed, the car’s front end imploded in a tangle of crushed and broken metal and glass, and the valet fell headfirst out of the driver’s-side door. Apparently he’d been doing some merrymaking of his own.

“Jimmy just looked at his watch, clapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I tell you what, Roberto — we’re never gonna get a taxi at this time of night.’”

James Coburn. As free-spiritedly cool as Flint.

Source: “A Fortunate Life” by Robert Vaughn