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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   
   SNAP/REX/Shutterstock   
   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."   
      
   Related   
   Robert Vaughn Man From UNCLE   
      
   TV's `Man From U.N.C.L.E.' Robert Vaughn on Early Influences, Natalie Wood   
      
   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    
   --- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+ W10 (1607)   
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