Robert Vaughn Was The Greatest Actor-Activist You’ve Never Heard Of

You may not have heard of Robert Vaughn, who died last Friday; he was in his acting heyday in the ’60s and ’70s. But Hollywood hasn’t forgotten him. Over the past year and a half, it’s been trying — weakly — to recreate two of his most iconic roles: Napoleon Solo in the The Man From U.N.C.L.E., played by a handsome but flavorless Henry Cavill in the turgid film remake, and Lee in the film The Magnificent Seven, whose modern counterpart was played with mere competence by Ethan Hawke. What these imperfect reboots make clear is something I’ve always known: Robert Vaughn is irreplaceable as an actor.

But after hearing the news of his death at the age of 83, only days after a catastrophic U.S. election, it’s Vaughn’s irreplaceability as a public figure that I keep coming back to. I can’t think of many current stars who engaged in the kind of civic participation that he did over the course of his 60-plus year career, especially during the turbulent ’60s. And as I pore over his books again in the days after his death, I also believe we could actually learn something from the works of this strange, sharp man.

It was always going to hurt to lose Robert Vaughn. It might have been Napoleon’s dreamy and sardonic partner Illya Kuryakin (played by David McCallum, whose beauty actually caused a teenage riot at a Macy’s…