Few actors could be as effortlessly dominant as the late James Coburn, the subject of a three-film tribute airing Sunday night on Turner Classic Movies. And nowhere was that talent better displayed than in the film that brought him his first taste of big-screen fame.

Coburn, who died at age 74 Monday after suffering a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home, earned his acting stripes on television, appearing in dozens of dramas (often aired live) during the 1950s. But it was in John Sturges' 1960 Western, The Magnificent Seven (7:30 p.m.), that he started to make his mark as a laconic presence impossible to ignore. He could play it either menacing (if the movie was a drama) or cool (in comedies, such as the 1966 James Bond spoof Our Man Flint), but either way, he dominated the screen, often without seeming to try.

As the knife-throwing Britt in The Magnificent Seven, he was hardly envisioned as the central figure; in fact, half the fun of watching this Western take on Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai is savoring the tension between Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, both of whom saw themselves as the star of the picture. Coburn's Britt is a man of precious few words - he may very well toss out more knives than lines - but his screen presence is the equal of theirs.

With a face designed to illustrate the word "chiseled," dominated by a pair of deep-set eyes and a mouth that seemed markedly out of proportion, he resembled the joker in a deck of cards. And like that wild card, he could be as unpredictable as he was memorable.

Coburn is used to similar, if less memorable, effect in Sturges' 1963 World War II drama The Great Escape (4:30 p.m.), where he plays Flying Officer Louis "The Manufacturer" Sedgwick, and in Stanley Donen's 1963 Charade (10 p.m.), where he's one of three mysterious thugs trying to strong-arm $250,000 out of a recently widowed Audrey Hepburn.

Unfortunately, Coburn's greatest movies - including the Flint films, Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and his Oscar-winning turn in Paul Schrader's Affliction - are not part of Sunday's tribute. But all are available on video, if the three movies TCM is showing serve to do nothing more than whet your appetite for more. James Coburn's performances have a habit of doing that.

Cinema Sundays

Director Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone, the story of a Jewish doctor who is one of the Sonderkommandos - Jews assigned by the Germans at Auschwitz to help in the extermination of their fellow prisoners, in exchange for marginally better treatment and perhaps an extension of their own lives - is this weekend's Cinema Sundays feature. The film stars David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel and Mira Sorvino.

The movie starts at 10:30 a.m., following a complimentary breakfast of coffee and bagels. Admission is $15. Information: Call 410-727-3464 or online at www.cinemasundays.com.

Also at the Charles this weekend is the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business, the first of their movies written directly for the screen (both The Coconuts and Animal Crackers were adapted from the stage). This is the one in which they're stowaways on an ocean liner, smuggled inside barrels marked "kippered herring." It's also the one where each tries to get off the boat by impersonating Maurice Chevalier. Great stuff.

The movie plays at noon Saturday; admission is $5.