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| James Coburn |
“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
