-By Warner Todd Huston
November 11, 2016 brings sad news with the passing of actor Robert Vaughn, most well known as portraying super spy Napoleon Solo in the 1960’s TV series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”
Vaughn, who had an extremely long, varied, and busy acting career that spanned stage, film, and TV, passed away at 83 after a short battle with Leukemia.
The famed actor appeared in some iconic movies including “Magnificent Seven” (1960), “Bullitt” (1968), and “The Towering Inferno” (1974). But he also had long running stints on TV in such series as “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Protectors,” “The A-Team,” the mini-Series “Centennial,” and the British TV series “Hustle.”
While he was quite a left-winger and was active early in the Vietnam anti-war movement, Vaughn was less like the loudmouthed liberal actors that seem uneducated and halfbaked who today blather about politics. In fact, he was quite the thoughtful, intellectual man and while he worked as Napoleon Solo in the mid 1960s, Vaughn went back to college and earned a degree in political science.
I was always struck by how gracious Robert Vaughn was. Especially to fellow U.N.C.L.E. star David McCallum. It must be remembered that U.N.C.L.E. was supposed to be all about Napoleon Solo — in fact, the original title of the series was set to be simply “Solo.” But when the Ilya character became a hit along with the show itself, it never seemed that Vaughn resented it. His gracious acceptance of McCallum — a relative new comer to Hollywood at the time — is unusual. After all the entertainment world, where passions and egos are usually so out sized, is usually a very jealous business but Vaughn always seemed quite happy for McCallum’s success.
So, the passing of Napoleon Solo is sad news, indeed.
Napoleon is closing channel D… for the last time.
Props from my personal collection.
Robert Vaughn, “Magnificent Seven”
Robert Vaughn, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, “Magnificent Seven”
Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn, “Bullit”
Robert Vaughn, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”
The cast of the “A-Team”
The cast of “Hustle”
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Follow Warner Todd Huston on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
NOTE: If you want to comment, for some reason our Facebook comments section takes a bit of time to load. It’ll pop up soon. Thanks