Milestones Dec. 2, 2002

DIED. JAMES COBURN, 74, craggy, slyly intelligent Hollywood tough guy whose memorable villains were made creepier by his deep, satanic laugh and toothy, knowing grin; of a heart attack; at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. Coburn was famous for playing macho sidekicks in Westerns and action films, memorably as the laconic, deceptively easygoing knife thrower Britt in The Magnificent Seven, an army scout in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee and a prisoner of war in the World War II drama The Great Escape. The wry actor gained star stature in the late 1960s as the lead in the James Bond spoofs...

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