Hey, guys. Quint here with some words on the the late, great Robert Vaughn. It's been a hell of a week, hasn't it? Half of our starkly divided country is in mourning over the election results, Leonard Cohen passed away and now we've lost Robert Vaughn.
Like most actors of his generation, Robert Vaughn got his chance to become a star thanks to constant appearances on that crazy new TV thing, popping up in shows like Big Town, Father Knows Best, Medic, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, Panic!, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to name a few.
His first real movie as a major character was the Paul Newman vehicle The Young Philadelphians, an Academy Award-winning drama in which a young lawyer defends his friend (played by Vaughn) on a murder count.
He got that movie 4 years into his career as a day player and the following year he landed a role in the movie he'll likely be remembered for, at least to cinephiles.
Vaughn was the last of the Magnificent Seven still with us, so with his passing is the closing chapter of yet another era of the Golden Age. That movie is just as charming and fun today as it was when it was released, thanks in large part to Vaughn's turn as Lee, who was pretty much Han Solo before Han Solo was dreamed up; a selfish scoundrel who develops a heart.
This isn't an uncommon archetype and Vaughn himself would play it again in Roger Corman's sci-fi remake of Magnificent Seven (which itself was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai). I always loved that Vaughn revisited that character and did so with such gusto. It wasn't just another job. It wasn't beneath him to work for Roger Corman. If he felt embarrassed to go back to that well for such a well-known schlockmeister it certainly didn't show in his performance.
That little window was Vaughn's specialty. He could be a weasel and a charmer all at the same time. No easy feat.
He could dip into either well or mix the waters to fit any character. The charmer side of him got the most bang for its buck with his turn as Napoleon Solo.
I'm a movie guy, so I'll always associate Vaughn with his film roles, but there's no question that his legacy is The Man from U.N.C.L.E. I can reconcile because they made a couple different Man from U.N.C.L.E. features, even if they were just episodes of the show cut together into feature length.
Napoleon Solo was America's James Bond, bowing around exactly the same time as the Connery films started. In fact, Ian Fleming had a hand in creating the show. Vaughn would play that role off and on through the '80s.
Like most actors who came to prominence in the '60s Vaughn ended up doing a whole lot of genre in the '70s and '80s as he got older. Like I said above, he was a professional, so even when he was doing exploitation (big budget, like The Towering Inferno, and small, like Starship Invasions and CHUD II) he approached it like a prestige picture.
The last couple of roles of his that really stood out to me are comedic roles. He played the bad guy in both Trey Parker and Matt Stone's BASEketball and Louis CK's Pootie Tang. Holy shit is he funny in those movies, especially BASEketball where he plays the straight man and his horrified reaction to the goofy insanity happening around him at all times cracks me up every time I watch it.
Vaughn was a wonderful actor and a wholly unique screen presence. He will be missed. My thoughts will be with Mr. Vaughn's friends, family and fans.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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