Happy birthday to rugged actor James Coburn, who turns 83 today. Or would have: he died of a heart attack in 2002. (I thought he was still with us until I looked it up.)
Others who died that same year: baseball great Ted Williams, busybody great Ann Landers, and beloved royal The Queen Mum.
That’s James Coburn at left above, with Gene Hackman in the 1975 film Bite the Bullet. Synopsis: “A group of ex-rough riders, an ex-prostitute and a gunfighter enter a horse race in the desert.” Coburn played the ex-prostitute.
Kidding! But the film did inspire one of the all-time nit-picky “goof” claims in the IMDB:
Rosie casually drops the term “Mickey Finn” to refer to a near-toxic combination of whiskey and sleeping medicine. According to the Wikipedia page for this term, Mr. Finn did indeed commit his drug-and-rob crimes about three years prior to the action in this film but also indicates that while the crime was mentioned in Chicago newspapers the term itself wasn’t in popular usage as a stand-alone noun until several years later.
If only Mr. Coburn were alive today to comment on the validity of that claim.
See our full biography of James Coburn »