Solo No More at 74

I was too young to appreciate The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) when it was first broadcast, but I’ve since come to enjoy the work of Robert Vaughn, who of course played spy Napoleon Solo in U.N.C.L.E. Just the other night, I was watching one of his two appearances in Columbo (the 1976 episode “Last Salute to the Commodore”). But it wasn’t until I checked out his credits at the International Movie Database that I understood just how prolific Vaughn has been.

Prior to U.N.C.L.E., he did turns in Gunsmoke and The Rifleman, and since 1970 he’s taken parts in everything from The Towering Inferno (1974) and Superman III (1983), to Hawaii Five-O, The A-Team, Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis: Murder, The Magnificent Seven, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He’s portrayed two American presidents (Woodrow Wilson in 1979’s Backstairs at the White House and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1986 teleflick Murrow), and co-starred in two series since U.N.C.L.E. said “uncle”: The Protectors (1972-1973) and, most recently, Hustle, which returns for its fourth season next year.

So let me join author-blogger Bill Crider in wishing Robert Vaughn a very happy 74th birthday today.

AN INTERESTING FACTOID: Wikipedia reports that Vaughn holds not only a Master’s degree in theater from Los Angeles City College, but “a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Southern California,” and he “published his [doctoral] dissertation as the book Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting in 1972.”