As a scholar who earned a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Southern California and published a respected book on the Hollywood blacklist, Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting (1972), Robert Vaughn should have abandoned his career as a film actor to become a film critic. While he would have earned far less money, the results might have far more interesting, both for Dr. Vaughn and for the world.

From the onset, Vaughn has always seemed more intelligent than his material. In the 1950s, amidst a blur of forgettable television westerns and teen exploitation films, his standout performance came in Roger CORMAN's Teenage Cavemen, where he was visibly uncomfortable in his caveman outfit but unusually involved in its unconventional plot. However, he garnered more attention for his role as a gunman in The Magnificent Seven (1960), which he later reprised in its dull science-fictional remake, Battle beyond the Stars. Soon, he became famous as television's answer to James Bond in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but he projected a certain air of arrogance in the series that alienated many young fans, like me and my sister, who endured all the adventures

sed on Vaughn while eagerly awaiting the one episode per season that starred sidekick David MCCALLUM, perhaps not quite as bright but clearly cooler than Vaughn. With our youthful sensibilities already attuned to the iconography of popular literature and film, we were undoubtedly disturbed by the fact that Vaughn's Napoleon Solo kept acting as if he were smarter than everybody else, which may have been true, but is simply not the way that action film heroes are supposed to act.

Instead, for actors who are smarter than everybody else and wish to appear that way, there is only one proper role, and that is villainy. Thus, after emerging from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the similar, but less gimmicky, series The Protectors (1972-74), a slightly older Vaughn inevitably segued into a second career playing unsympathetic authority figures. True, he would occasionally essay heroic parts — as in Starship Invasions, The Lucifer Complex, and a Man from U.N.C.L.E. reunion movie — but he seemed more natural while serving as the uncredited voice of the scheming computer in Demon Seed, as the corrupt politician striving to cover up what's in Hangar 18, as the evil tycoon seeking to rule the world in Superman III, and as the deranged general coping with zombies in C.H.U.D. II. When one surveys these performances, they all seem an incredible waste of the talents of a man who was, after all, now qualified to work as a college professor and scholar. But the film industry temptingly pays intelligent people millions of dollars to do stupid work, while academia pays intelligent people next to nothing to do intelligent work — one of the innumerable injustices in the world that the erudite Vaughn was no doubt prepared to discuss at length following his undemanding days on the set.

In fact, having delved into the seamier side of Hollywood while researching its infamous blacklist, and now obliged to make a living in some of its least noteworthy productions, Vaughn had surely grown genuinely displeased with Hollywood, leading him to happily participate in savage assaults on the industry like Blake Edwards's S.O.B. (1981) and the more surrealistic That's Adequate, featuring Vaughn's bemused take on the ultimate unsympathetic authority figure, Adolf Hitler. Both of these works function more as commentaries on films than as films themselves — perhaps the

ule the world in Superman III, and as the deranged general coping with zombies in C.H.U.D. II. When one surveys these performances, they all seem an incredible waste of the talents of a man who was, after all, now qualified to work as a college professor and scholar. But the film industry temptingly pays intelligent people millions of dollars to do stupid work, while academia pays intelligent people next to nothing to do intelligent work — one of the innumerable injustices in the world that the erudite Vaughn was no doubt prepared to discuss at length following his undemanding days on the set.

In fact, having delved into the seamier side of Hollywood while researching its infamous blacklist, and now obliged to make a living in some of its least noteworthy productions, Vaughn had surely grown genuinely displeased with Hollywood, leading him to happily participate in savage assaults on the industry like Blake Edwards's S.O.B. (1981) and the more surrealistic That's Adequate, featuring Vaughn's bemused take on the ultimate unsympathetic authority figure, Adolf Hitler. Both of these works function more as commentaries on films than as films themselves — perhaps the only sorts of projects that could really inspire Vaughn at this late stage in his career. His potential effectiveness as a critical observer of, rather than a participant in, films is demonstrated by the contrast between the inept Joe's Apartment, where Vaughn is entirely forgettable as the hero's stern father, and the engaging The Making of “Joe's Apartment”, where host Vaughn's droll deprecatory comments on the proceedings make the half-hour documentary more entertaining than the film itself. To provide the world with more droll deprecatory comments about the absurd ways he has earned a living, perhaps Vaughn should write another book, his autobiography — to be entitled Only Villains: A Study of Show Business