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Robert Vaughn, `The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' Star, Dies at 83
Carmel Dagan
Staff Writer


Robert Vaughn Dead
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November 11, 2016 | 09:53AM PT

Robert Vaughn, who starred as Napoleon Solo on TV's "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."
from 1964-68, died Friday morning of acute leukemia, his manager Matthew
Sullivan told Variety. He was 83.

Vaughn began undergoing treatment for the illness this year on the East Coast.

The James Bond-influenced "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," in which Vaughn's Solo and
 David McCallum's Illya Kuryakin battled the evil forces of T.H.R.U.S.H. around
 the globe (thanks to the glories of stock footage), was quite the pop-culture
phenomenon in the mid-1960s, even as the show's tone wavered from fairly
serious to cartoonish and back again over its four seasons.

It spawned a spinoff, "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.," starring Stefanie Powers, as
well as a few feature adaptations during the run of the TV series - "One Spy
Too Many," "One of Our Spies Is Missing," and "The Karate Killers" - that
starred Vaughn and McCallum. Vaughn also guested as Napoleon Solo on sitcom
"Please Don't Eat the Daisies" and made an uncredited appearance as Solo in the
 1966 Doris Day feature "The Glass Bottomed Boat"; he reprised the role in 1983
 TV movie "The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later
Affair."

A Guy Ritchie-directed feature adaptation of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." was
released in August 2015 with Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer starring as Solo and
 Kuryakin, respectively.

Vaughn vaulted into the public eye with his striking performance in the 1959
Paul Newman feature "The Young Philadelphians," for which he was Oscar
nominated for best supporting actor.

In the film, Newman's character is pursuing his Machiavellian way to the top of
 Philadelphia's upper crust when he sees his friend, played by Vaughn,
manipulated by said upper crust into alcoholism and an unjust murder charge.
The New York Times said, "Robert Vaughn, as Newman's sick and ill-used friend,
adds a striking bit in incoherently explaining his dire predicament."

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The next year he was one of the stars of John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven,"
 a remake of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai," along with Yul Brynner, Steve
McQueen, and Charles Bronson. The success of the Western certainly boosted the
actor's profile, but his brand of sophisticated urbanite did not mesh well with
 a career in Westerns. (Though when the enduringly popular film was adapted
into a TV series in 1998, Vaughn returned in the recurring role of Judge Oren
Travis, and when the material was contemporized and turned into the story of a
British soccer team in a 2013 film called "The Magnificent Eleven," the actor
duly starred as the villain, a gangster named American Bob.) Antoine Fuqua also
 directed a remake of the film, starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt,
this year.

In 1968, after appearing in the movie spinoffs from "The Man From UNCLE,"
Vaughn appeared in McQueen vehicle "Bullitt" as the politician who's out for
the head of McQueen's cop while pressure mounts from other directions as well
(and a lot of nifty car chases around San Francisco are offered up).

He did several films in a row at this point: comedy "If It's Tuesday, This Must
 Be Belgium" (1969); WWII drama "The Bridge at Remagen," in which he played the
 Nazi commander (the New York Times said: "Mr. Vaughn, as the tense commander
across the water, is excellent"; a feature adaptation of "Julius Caesar" that
starred John Gielgud, Charlton Heston, and Jason Robards, and in which Vaughn
played Servilius Casca; the interesting sci-fi drama "The Mind of Mr. Soames,"
in which Terence Stamp played a man, in a coma since birth, who's brought to
consciousness by an American doctor played by Vaughn, who soon spars with the
British team supervising him over his care; and 1971's "The Statue" and "Clay
Pigeon."

From 1972-74 he did his third stint as the star of a TV series with "The
Protectors," playing Harry Rule, one of three freelance troubleshooters who run
 an international crime-fighting agency based in London.

In 1974, as the show ended, he did two feature films: "The Man From
Independence," in which Vaughn played Harry S. Truman, and disaster movie "The
Towering Inferno," in which he played Senator Parker, who helps out once the
blaze starts.

During the 1970s Vaughn capitalized on the era of the miniseries, appearing in
NBC's highly regarded 1976 entry "Captains and the Kings"; ABC's "Washington:
Behind Closed Doors" (1977), for which he received his first Emmy nomination;
NBC's "Backstairs at the White House," in which the actor played President
Woodrow Wilson, for which he was also Emmy nominated; NBC's "Centennial," in
which he played the wealthy, opportunistic Morgan Wendell; ABC's "Inside the
Third Reich" (1982); and CBS' "The Blue and the Gray" (1982).

Having played Woodrow Wilson, he now played Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the
1982 HBO adaptation of the Dore Schary one-man play "FDR: That Man in the White
 House" (a role he reprised in the 1986 telepic "Murrow," starring Daniel J.
Travanti as Edward R. Murrow) and Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the
Australian-made, PBS-aired miniseries "The Last Bastion" in 1984.

The actor was now regularly playing senators and other powerful men who were
often given to scheming and nefarious motives: Vaughn played one such fellow as
 the villain in 1983's "Superman III."

He recurred on the series "Emerald Point N.A.S.," starring Dennis Weaver, in
1983-84.

Vaughn was brought aboard the sagging NBC series "The A-Team" in its final
season in 1986-87 as the network changed the flavor of the show. The actor
played General Hunt Stockwell, a mysterious operative for the CIA for whom the
team would now work, often abroad, in "Mission: Impossible"-like scenarios.
(One episode was titled "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair."

He was still working in features; Vaughn starred as Adolf Hitler in the obscure
 1989 comedy "That's Adequate" and as Lord Byron Orlock in the comedy
"Transylvania Twist" the same year. He kept busy, too, with guest appearances
on "Murder, She Wrote," "Walker, Texas Ranger," and "The Nanny."

While "Law & Order" afforded many an actor with an opportunity to demonstrate
his or her own skills, Vaughn was particularly memorable in his three-episode
1997-98 arc as Carl Anderton, a man as powerful as he is certifiably crazy and
stubborn. What begins as Anderton's refusal to acknowledge that mental illness
excused his grandson's otherwise criminal behavior - and that a propensity for
paranoia may have been passed down genetically from him - escalates into a
campaign to remove D.A. Adam Schiff from office.

More recently he was memorable in two unrelated performances on "Law & Order:
SVU"; in 2015 episode "December Solstice," he played a celebrity author who
becomes the object of a legal battle over his welfare between his new wife and
his daughters from a previous marriage.

Vaughn brought his trademark brand of villainy to the David Zucker comedy
"BASEketball" in 1998 and to Louis C.K.'s comedy "Pootie Tang" in 2001.

From 2004-12 Vaughn starred in the BBC-AMC co-production "Hustle," a stylish if
 derivative dramedy series about a group of London con artists who pull off
elaborate stings.

In 2012 he did a 13-episode arc on the U.K. soap "Coronation Street," in which
he played Milton Fanshaw, an American restaurant owner who proves a love
interest for one of the main characters, tempting her to come back with him to
the U.S.

Robert Francis Vaughn was born in New York City to parents in show business,
his father a radio actor and his mother an actress on the stage.

He went to high school in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota,
 where he majored in journalism, but quit after a year. Moving to Los Angeles,
he studied drama at Los Angeles City College, then transferred to Cal State
L.A. and completed his Master's degree. Subsequently - and while having already
 started a busy acting career in the 1960s and into the 1970s -  he completed a
 Ph.D. in communications at USC. The subject of his thesis was the blacklisting
 of Hollywood entertainers during the McCarthy era, and it was published in
1972 as "Only Victims."

He made his small-screen debut way before the days of "U.N.C.L.E.," guesting on
 NBC's Richard Boone vehicle "Medic" in 1955 and was soon busy guesting on
shows ranging from "Father Knows Best" to "Gunsmoke," and "The Rifleman" to
"Dragnet," and "Mike Hammer." Vaughn also starred in the 1963-64 TV series "The
 Lieutenant," created by Gene Roddenberry.

Meanwhile, he made his big-screen debut in an uncredited role in Cecil B.
DeMille's 1956 epic "The Ten Commandments" and there soon followed roles in
Western "Hell's Crossroads" and "No Time to Be Young," a juvenile crime drama
in which he starred. But his performance in "The Young Philadelphians" and the
acclaim he received for it changed everything.

He is survived by wife Linda Staab, to whom he had been married since 1974, and
 two adopted children: son Cassidy and daughter Caitlin.


Regards,

Roger 
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