Robert Vaughn has died at the age of 83. He tended to play dashing, slightly roguish characters who had good hearts and occasionally bad judgement – though he’s best known for his role as a dapper secret agent and the gambling gunslinger from a classic western.
Robert Vaughn was, perhaps, a tad bit too handsome to be the movie star that Paul Newman and Robert Redford. He was at least as good an actor and displayed his range in a number of movies and television series – though he will probably be best remembered for playing the suave, confident Agent Napoleon Solo on NBC’s four season hit series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and as Lee, the gambler/gunslinger in the original Magnificent Seven (and, to genre fans, as Gelt – the Lee equivalent in the Roger Corman-produced sci fi version, Battle Beyond the Stars).
I became aware of Vaughn well before he joined the United Network Command for Laws and Enforcement – he appeared on a host of TV shows before becoming a star: Dragnet, Mike Hammer, Whirlybirds, The Rifleman, Zorro, Riverboat and more.
It was his Magnificent Seven role that put him on the map. Lee was smart, funny, deadly and honorable. He was a quick with a gun as a deck of cards. Even among a cast that included Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn, he made a huge impression.
Following The Magnificent Seven, though, he had to return to guest staring roles on TV shows for a few more years – popping up on Wagon Train, Thriller, The Asphalt Jungle, Tales of Wells Fargo, Bonanza and The Untouchables (among others) before getting the series regular role of Captain Raymond Rambridge on Gene Roddenberry’s one season wonder, The Lieutenant.
His work on The Lieutenant led to him landing the role of Napoleon Solo. The funny thing about his time on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was that, though he was the star, David McCallum (the same David McCallum who plays Ducky on NCIS) became a teen idol for his role as Solo’s partner/sidekick, Ilya Kuryakin – a genuine fluke as McCallum had a one-off bit part in the original pilot but was added to the series when he tested well.
While the kids were Kuryakin fans, though, the bulk of the show’s audience was adults and Vaughn’s ability to give Solo an undercurrent of vulnerability (mostly hidden by his confidence and charisma) gave them a hero who always won, but never without having to work for it.
The character – and Vaughn – was so popular that the character was slipped into the Doris Day/Rod Taylor spy comedy, The Glass Bottom Boat. And after U.N.C.L.E. was canceled, it spawned several TV-movies of varying quality – though Vaughn (and McCallum for that matter) were always sterling.
The role that most impressed me, however, was German Major Paul Kreuger in 1969’s The Bridge at Remagen. In Remagen, Vaughn’s Kreuger refuses to follow orders that will get his men killed and allows the Allies to take the titular bridge.
Kreuger is a man of principle and honor. He does the right thing and faces a firing squad for it. Although top billing in the film goes to George Segal, Vaughn’s Kreuger is the real hero of the piece – a man who is willing to die for his principles.
Of course, Vaughn’s career didn’t end there. He went on to play a few variations on Solo (stereotyping isn’t a bad thing if it keeps you working!) on shows like The Protectors, but also starred in quality miniseries like Captains and Kings, Washington: Behind Closed Doors and Centennial.
Later in his career, Vaughn got to play the kind of character Solo might have grown into as a middle-aged man and senior citizen – General Hunt Stockwell on 13 episodes of The A-Team; the irascible Judge Oren Travis on the TV series The Magnificent Seven, and the con man brains behind the bad-guys-with-hearts-of-gold British series, Hustle.
He even did a 13 episode run on the longest running soap opera in English TV history, Coronation Street.
Robert Vaughn is gone but Lee, Gelt, Napoleon Solo and Albert Stroller will live on.
An actor can’t ask for much more than that – and Vaughn was one of the best.