Robert Vaughn, the urbane actor who starred as the American spy Napoleon Solo on the slick 1960s NBC series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., died Friday. He was 83.
Vaughn, who received an Oscar nomination for playing Paul Newman's hard-drinking buddy Chet in the 1959 drama The Young Philadelphians, died of acute leukemia in a hospital on the East Coast, his manager Matthew Sullivan told The Hollywood Reporter. He had been undergoing treatment for his illness in New York and Connecticut.
Vaughn's memorable performances also included turns as one of the seven gunmen in The Magnificent Seven (1960), as a steely senator in Bullitt (1968) — those two opposite Steve McQueen — as an addled studio chief in Blake Edwards' S.O.B. (1981) and as a corporate villain in Superman III (1983).
For his work in Washington: Behind Closed Doors, a 1977 ABC miniseries that was based on John Ehrlichman's book, The Company, Vaughn received an Emmy Award for playing a crude aide to the president, a character based on Richard Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.
Shortly after starring as a U.S. Marine captain in the short-lived NBC drama The Lieutenant — a show created by future Star Trek legend Gene Roddenberry — Vaughn landed the role of the charismatic Solo on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., another series from MGM Television and producer Norman Felton's Arena Productions.
On the Cold War-era series, which lasted four seasons and spawned a sequel and several movies stitched together from episodes, Vaughn teamed with Russian spy Illya Kuryakin (played by Scottish actor David McCallum) as members of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
The outfit, with headquarters cleverly concealed in a dry cleaner's shop in a New York City brownstone, fought the evil forces of T.H.R.U.S.H., thought to be an acronym for Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.
Felton, who was a friend of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, gave Vaughn some advice on how to play Solo, the actor
related in a 2015 interview with
Entertainment Weekly.
He pursued journalism at the University of Minnesota, where he was selected as the male finalist in a radio contest for actors for 1951. That recognition gave him the confidence to move west, where he studied drama at Los Angeles City College and won an award for playing the lead in a production of Mr. Roberts.
After a talent scout spotted him on stage in Calder Willingham's End as a Man, Vaughn signed with Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster's film company — one of the first independents in Hollywood — but was drafted into the U.S. Army.
He received another Emmy nomination for portraying Woodrow Wilson in the 1979 NBC miniseries Backstairs at the White House; was the furtive Gen. Hunt Stockwell on NBC's The A-Team and a con man on the British series Hustle; and showed up in David Zucker's BASEketball (1998).
In the late 1970s, Vaughn attended night classes at USC and earned his doctorate in communications after writing a dissertation, Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting, about the dark period in Hollywood history.
He married actress Linda Staab in 1974, and they adopted children Caitlin and Cassidy. They survive him.
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