by Christopher Arnott, Arts & Literature, New Haven Advocate...the least-remembered star of the lot, Robert Vaughn. His timing is good — the successful 40-DVD complete "U.N.C.L.E." box set was released a year ago. But after U.N.C.L.E. was cancelled... history got in his way. While the reminiscences of his cool-hero counterparts are little more than fleshed-out filmographies, Vaughn's adventures take place in the real world...
Vaughn cured Martin Luther King's hiccups. He rode the funeral train of his assassinated friend Bobby Kennedy from New York to Washington following the ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral, events he describes in compelling detail. As the first major Hollywood celebrity to speak out openly against the Vietnam War, Vaughn went on "Firing Line," William F. Buckley's TV show, to debate him; Buckley was unprepared for Vaughn's clear grasp of the issues. The show's in-house referee declared the debate a draw...
...he had to be hustled out of his hotel into the sanctity of the International Hotel, Vaughn nearly lost all the interviews he'd compiled with survivors of the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist, data he was compiling for his master's thesis (later published as Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting
)...Robert Vaughn emerges, with all the derring-do of his immortal Napoleon Solo character, as the most authoritative voice of a time when overlooking major social issues in favor of more warmed-over Hollywood lore seems like heresy.
Referring to his book, A Fortunate Life
by Robert Vaughn...Vaughn doesn't shy away from sensationalism and candor — he drops names as avidly as the professional hanger-on George Hamilton. But his mix of honesty, integrity, loyalty, political passions, cultural context and open-eyed excitement at the world around him lifts his book above the tired nostalgia of his blue-eyed buff-boy brethren — it fits the present-day Obama era. "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."'s old enough to be a great-grandfather, but man, he's still hip. (more) (Amazon - The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)
