Adventures with Robert (Part I)
Since Robert Vaughn died the other day, I've been receiving so many nice consoling messages because everyone know how I felt about Mr. Vaughn and identified with his alter ego. I've also been seeing various tributes on the mass media and within fandom and a couple of folks have asked me to talk about my own experiences. We're talking decades here, so it's going to take more than one post. I'll try to write about everything but it may take all week so bear with me. Here's the first:
“This is Robert Vaughn. May I speak with ----?”
It’s quite a moment when you pick up the phone and hear the voice of the person who was your childhood idol asking to speak to you.
To be fair, David McCallum had called me the week before. Norman Felton told me he would send a personal letter to the folks involved in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” in order to smooth my path to asking for interviews with them for my dissertation. I estimated that David answered an hour or two after he received the letter, but then, he lives in New York City. I was so surprised, I nearly hung up on him, thinking he was a telemarketer.
But Robert [he always told me to call him Robert, not Mr. Vaughn, which I found really difficult] had been out of town, making a film. He also lives in more suburban Connecticut. Still, I didn’t expect his call either; he caught me in the middle of housecleaning. And yes, even though I’d met and interviewed dozens of celebrities over the years as a journalist, I had to sit down while talking to him and make sure I didn’t drop the phone.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice in person. The first time was at Creation Con in New York City, on Labor Day weekend in 1987. It was a huge audience. I looked for a seat, found one next to two strangers who turned out to be Nan Mack and her friend, Pat Gallagher. Robert arrived impeccably dressed and looking a little wary. This was one of his first encounters with fandom. He did not sign autographs although he did autograph a poster of “Teenage Caveman” when a fan in the front row held it up. He warmed up soon enough; he told funny stories, even imitated Steve McQueen’s voice and manner. I was pleasantly entertained. That day, I gave Nan the rough draft of an MFU story I was working on. A week later she wrote back. So, although I never met Robert that day, I initiated a friendship and eventually a writing collaboration that has lasted decades.
The next time I saw Robert on a stage was at The Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey in 1984. He starred with E.G. Marshall in “Inherit the Wind.” He played Drummond. I sat in the very last row of the orchestra [best ticket I could get]. His performance was impressive but once again, I made no effort to meet him.
The third time was in 1990, right after Christmas, when he starred with Polly Bergen in a short run of “Love Letters.” This time, I had a seat third row center and his performance was fabulous and heartbreaking. I do believe David is better on screen [the camera loves him] but Robert is better on stage [I have seen them both now, several times.] It was a blustery cold January day and this time, I did remain outside the theater to meet him and get an autograph. By that time, I was in contact with Norman and by extension, Sam Rolfe, over a possible MFU cable series that might run on TNT. I mentioned it to Robert but he was merely polite. There was a professional autograph seeker hounding him so it made things awkward. Still, I remember standing on the street for a few minutes, my heart pounding, after he was gone.
The call came a few years after that, once I’d embarked on my dissertation. I should mention that my relationship with Norman, connected through my academic work in Media Literacy, had progressed, and six weeks after giving birth by caesarian to my son, I was in Chicago at the 1992 Spycon, talking to Sam Rolfe about that possible cable series. Once more, Norman had smoothed the path. Sam told me that he would write the pilot, but if the series sold, he would tell Norman to get in touch with me because he’d be hiring writers. I told him I didn’t have an agent. “Honey,” he said [I can still hear his voice], “when I hire you, you will have an agent.” I went back to New Jersey ecstatic, thinking it was totally worth leaving my six week old infant with my husband.
In June, some eight months later, Sam had a heart attack on a tennis court and died. He was 65.
That kind of did it for me. I decided to remain in academia, finish my Ph.D. and secure the position that was waiting for me [I never got it; my son’s challenges slowed my work and the diss was finished too late.] I had an idea for a new model for mass communication but needed to apply it. My advisor pointed out that I knew both fans and producers, so why not use MFU as a case study?
Which is what brought me to that lunchtime phone call with Robert. We tried to coordinate schedules to arrange another, longer phone interview. Some days, I had classes and I had to pick up my son from an afternoon program. Robert had to pick up his daughter from soccer practice. Then he had to fly back to Australia to finish the shoot. We talked like two parents with busy lives, balancing both work and family.
Frankly, it was surreal. Years later, I once called him for a quick quote and his wife, Linda answered. She told me he’d call back because at the moment, he was on the ride-on mower, cutting their lawn.
Think about that image: Napoleon Solo riding on a mower.
In any case, we did finally arrange a time. I did call him and taped it, too. We talked for several hours actually, not only about MFU, but about other films he made. He went into great detail to me describing how he’d prepared to debate William F. Buckley on Vietnam. I’d watched that episode of “Firing Line” when I was a kid. Indeed, it had defined my political views ever since. Now, Robert was taking me behind the scenes of what I’d watched on my family’s old black and white TV set. We also spent a good deal of time talking about what it’s like to work toward your Ph.D. Robert told me how Norman would let him out early around 3 pm from shooting so he could attend classes. He also told me how he wrote his dissertation while touring in “Mr. Roberts,” how he had to drag with him a trunk full of books. Finally, he recalled how difficult it was for him to land interviews with theater folks who’d been blacklisted. I think out of a long list, he was only to get a quarter of the folks to talk with him. He asked me about my young son and sympathized, saying that if he’d had a family during that time, he didn’t think he would have been able to finish his diss. We commiserated; we compared experiences.
As I said, surreal.
We didn’t actually meet each other face to face until a year or two after that. In between, we talked a few times on the phone. Sometimes, he called me first, especially when some piece of information, some detail, would occur to him. I remember he was in Florida at one point, filming what I think turned out to be, “Vulcan.” He joked that he was trapped in his hotel room: the fans had found him he said.
Actually, he’d become far more comfortable with fans by then. When I finally did get to meet him, it was at Chiller Con, held every year in New Jersey the weekend before Halloween. They always had a separate autograph tent for the celebrities, and I had to time it so as to see him when there weren’t lines of fans around. We did this for a couple of years. One year, I brought my son who was still little. Robert leaned down and said to my son, “Do you know who I am? I’ll bet you’re tired of seeing my face.” I had , in fact, shown the Return movie poster to my son explaining that we’d be meeting the man in the picture. My son was still terribly confused.
Another time, Robert asked me if I wanted an autograph. He had photos and he’d sign them for $20 but he told me I could have one free. I replied that I preferred if he signed my copy of “Only Victims” which was the book version of his Ph.D. dissertation. He did so gladly and was pleased. You can see the photo.
During these visits, he would also tell me about other fans he’d met at other cons and ask me if I knew them. He could never remember their names, but he’d describe them as “the lawyer” or “the journalist guy.” I could always guess who he meant and tell him and then he’d say, yeah, that’s the person, and urge me to talk to them for my diss. He’d also store up details about MFU that he might have forgotten and then tell me those, too. I guess with his own experience, he became a bit invested in my work. I always say there are four big experiences that change you: going to war, having a kid, living through a big disaster like a flood or 9/11 …and earning a Ph.D.
I must admit, it was always fun to talk to him. I’d been a journalist since I was 18 and I was accustomed to interviewing celebrities. I never quite liked the fan/celebrity dynamic , but I was comfortable speaking with an actor or actress as two professionals, one on one. I was a film critic and correspondent for 20 years and then, for the last 20, I’ve covered theater. I’ve interviewed and had lunch with folks like Jerry Lewis, Richard Benjamin and Nick Nolte. I met Christopher Reeve and interviewed his wife, Dana, after his accident.
And Robert actually was only one of several folks connected with MFU that I met, interviewed and corresponded with. I spent a morning with David in a New York City pub; shared a lovely lunch with Doug Benton, George Lehr and Alvin Ganzer. And of course, I developed a friendship with Norman Felton, but those are stories for another time. What I can say is everyone, without exception, turned out to be great folks who were funny, professional and terribly nice.
So you’re probably wondering: but what was Robert really like? Well, after interviewing Robert and David, at first I was convinced that they were the opposite of their MFU characters. Robert was actually rather introverted, intellectual and bookish, not unlike some professors I’ve known. He was a little shy, too, and didn’t like mingling in large crowds.
But he could “turn it on” : I watched him do it. He could turn into “Robert Vaughn” and during these times, it was like an act. He would be witty and charming, but as the fans moved away, he would relax and become more matter of fact, down to earth. Whenever I interviewed him, he would deliver to me stock phrases, details, stories and jokes that I’d read in a hundred interviews before. Because I read or watched practically every single article or interview he’d ever done, I could recognize when he clicked into automatic.
But, as I’ve said, I am a longtime journalist. I know how to get the subject out of the prepared loop. I would ask Robert something he’d never been asked or push him on a point or two and then I’d get something more real. He loved taking politics. When he got going in that direction, he became more candid. He also had a variable memory. He didn’t always get the facts right about MFU, especially if it was something that he’d heard from someone else or had been repeated [often wrongly] for years. But he also remembered every single detail about that debate with Buckley.
I heard him on the Howard Stern show once [David even called in]. Stern can be really vulgar but that’s his bad boy persona. He’s actually a very good interviewer and knows how to get his guests to talk honestly. Stern is also an MFU fan ---he played UNCLE as a kid just like the rest of us ---and he treated Robert quite respectfully. Nevertheless, being Howard, the conversation turned not only to entertainment and politics, but to sex and he managed to get Robert to talk about things I’d never read in magazine. It was funny and genuine.
One of the most amusing exchanges Robert and I had in connection with Solo's sexual appeal was this: Robert noted that David attracted younger fans and he had an older fan base during the show. I told Robert how some fans say they saw Solo as a bit threatening, a bit too sexually aggressive, but that now that they are older, he's more attractive. "See?" he laughed. "That's why I had older women fans."
By comparison to Robert, David is far more like Illya. David did love technology and still does. Robert told me he could barely turn the key in the ignition and drive his car. Actually, his wife does most of the driving. When a Robert Vaughn web page and then Facebook page popped up, I knew Robert wasn’t actually writing it like David does.
But all of this makes sense because Solo was created by Norman but Illya was just a cipher. Robert had to fit into his character while David, in collaboration with Sam, and to some extent, scriptwriters like Allan Caillou, developed Illya himself.
During my diss work, I created a survey based on the famous Myers-Briggs personality test and asked the fans to take the test, but *as* Solo and *as* Kuryakin. I also asked Robert and David to take it. David declined but Robert consented. He said, though, that he’d “probably get it wrong” and he was correct. His results did not match the fans’ conception. He said that was because he filled out the survey as himself and he did not match the character he played. Even more interesting, of the fans’ results, Illya had one clear personality and one slight variation: Solo came out with about a half dozen different personalities. Indeed, the only thing folks agreed upon was that Solo was an extrovert.
Robert was definitely not and he knew it. But as I said, he could turn it on. This is actually what gave me my concept of Solo as an agent: it’s all a façade. A running theme in the St. Crispin’s Day Society universe is that when Solo sees his reflection in mirrors of the steel corridors of UNCLE, he knows what he’s looking at is not who he really is. Illya eventually learns this too, and he’s one of the few people who truly understands the core of his partner. Illya also thinks that’s the reason that Solo is more suited to spying, in some ways, than he is. He tends to the technology and details, leaving the manipulation of people to his partner.
So, even though I first thought the real personalities of Robert and David were opposite of their characters, I changed my mind as time passed. They were ---and weren’t ---their characters, depending upon how you analyzed it.
[To be continued]
“This is Robert Vaughn. May I speak with ----?”
It’s quite a moment when you pick up the phone and hear the voice of the person who was your childhood idol asking to speak to you.
To be fair, David McCallum had called me the week before. Norman Felton told me he would send a personal letter to the folks involved in “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” in order to smooth my path to asking for interviews with them for my dissertation. I estimated that David answered an hour or two after he received the letter, but then, he lives in New York City. I was so surprised, I nearly hung up on him, thinking he was a telemarketer.
But Robert [he always told me to call him Robert, not Mr. Vaughn, which I found really difficult] had been out of town, making a film. He also lives in more suburban Connecticut. Still, I didn’t expect his call either; he caught me in the middle of housecleaning. And yes, even though I’d met and interviewed dozens of celebrities over the years as a journalist, I had to sit down while talking to him and make sure I didn’t drop the phone.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice in person. The first time was at Creation Con in New York City, on Labor Day weekend in 1987. It was a huge audience. I looked for a seat, found one next to two strangers who turned out to be Nan Mack and her friend, Pat Gallagher. Robert arrived impeccably dressed and looking a little wary. This was one of his first encounters with fandom. He did not sign autographs although he did autograph a poster of “Teenage Caveman” when a fan in the front row held it up. He warmed up soon enough; he told funny stories, even imitated Steve McQueen’s voice and manner. I was pleasantly entertained. That day, I gave Nan the rough draft of an MFU story I was working on. A week later she wrote back. So, although I never met Robert that day, I initiated a friendship and eventually a writing collaboration that has lasted decades.
The next time I saw Robert on a stage was at The Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey in 1984. He starred with E.G. Marshall in “Inherit the Wind.” He played Drummond. I sat in the very last row of the orchestra [best ticket I could get]. His performance was impressive but once again, I made no effort to meet him.
The third time was in 1990, right after Christmas, when he starred with Polly Bergen in a short run of “Love Letters.” This time, I had a seat third row center and his performance was fabulous and heartbreaking. I do believe David is better on screen [the camera loves him] but Robert is better on stage [I have seen them both now, several times.] It was a blustery cold January day and this time, I did remain outside the theater to meet him and get an autograph. By that time, I was in contact with Norman and by extension, Sam Rolfe, over a possible MFU cable series that might run on TNT. I mentioned it to Robert but he was merely polite. There was a professional autograph seeker hounding him so it made things awkward. Still, I remember standing on the street for a few minutes, my heart pounding, after he was gone.
The call came a few years after that, once I’d embarked on my dissertation. I should mention that my relationship with Norman, connected through my academic work in Media Literacy, had progressed, and six weeks after giving birth by caesarian to my son, I was in Chicago at the 1992 Spycon, talking to Sam Rolfe about that possible cable series. Once more, Norman had smoothed the path. Sam told me that he would write the pilot, but if the series sold, he would tell Norman to get in touch with me because he’d be hiring writers. I told him I didn’t have an agent. “Honey,” he said [I can still hear his voice], “when I hire you, you will have an agent.” I went back to New Jersey ecstatic, thinking it was totally worth leaving my six week old infant with my husband.
In June, some eight months later, Sam had a heart attack on a tennis court and died. He was 65.
That kind of did it for me. I decided to remain in academia, finish my Ph.D. and secure the position that was waiting for me [I never got it; my son’s challenges slowed my work and the diss was finished too late.] I had an idea for a new model for mass communication but needed to apply it. My advisor pointed out that I knew both fans and producers, so why not use MFU as a case study?
Which is what brought me to that lunchtime phone call with Robert. We tried to coordinate schedules to arrange another, longer phone interview. Some days, I had classes and I had to pick up my son from an afternoon program. Robert had to pick up his daughter from soccer practice. Then he had to fly back to Australia to finish the shoot. We talked like two parents with busy lives, balancing both work and family.
Frankly, it was surreal. Years later, I once called him for a quick quote and his wife, Linda answered. She told me he’d call back because at the moment, he was on the ride-on mower, cutting their lawn.
Think about that image: Napoleon Solo riding on a mower.
In any case, we did finally arrange a time. I did call him and taped it, too. We talked for several hours actually, not only about MFU, but about other films he made. He went into great detail to me describing how he’d prepared to debate William F. Buckley on Vietnam. I’d watched that episode of “Firing Line” when I was a kid. Indeed, it had defined my political views ever since. Now, Robert was taking me behind the scenes of what I’d watched on my family’s old black and white TV set. We also spent a good deal of time talking about what it’s like to work toward your Ph.D. Robert told me how Norman would let him out early around 3 pm from shooting so he could attend classes. He also told me how he wrote his dissertation while touring in “Mr. Roberts,” how he had to drag with him a trunk full of books. Finally, he recalled how difficult it was for him to land interviews with theater folks who’d been blacklisted. I think out of a long list, he was only to get a quarter of the folks to talk with him. He asked me about my young son and sympathized, saying that if he’d had a family during that time, he didn’t think he would have been able to finish his diss. We commiserated; we compared experiences.
As I said, surreal.
We didn’t actually meet each other face to face until a year or two after that. In between, we talked a few times on the phone. Sometimes, he called me first, especially when some piece of information, some detail, would occur to him. I remember he was in Florida at one point, filming what I think turned out to be, “Vulcan.” He joked that he was trapped in his hotel room: the fans had found him he said.
Actually, he’d become far more comfortable with fans by then. When I finally did get to meet him, it was at Chiller Con, held every year in New Jersey the weekend before Halloween. They always had a separate autograph tent for the celebrities, and I had to time it so as to see him when there weren’t lines of fans around. We did this for a couple of years. One year, I brought my son who was still little. Robert leaned down and said to my son, “Do you know who I am? I’ll bet you’re tired of seeing my face.” I had , in fact, shown the Return movie poster to my son explaining that we’d be meeting the man in the picture. My son was still terribly confused.
Another time, Robert asked me if I wanted an autograph. He had photos and he’d sign them for $20 but he told me I could have one free. I replied that I preferred if he signed my copy of “Only Victims” which was the book version of his Ph.D. dissertation. He did so gladly and was pleased. You can see the photo.
During these visits, he would also tell me about other fans he’d met at other cons and ask me if I knew them. He could never remember their names, but he’d describe them as “the lawyer” or “the journalist guy.” I could always guess who he meant and tell him and then he’d say, yeah, that’s the person, and urge me to talk to them for my diss. He’d also store up details about MFU that he might have forgotten and then tell me those, too. I guess with his own experience, he became a bit invested in my work. I always say there are four big experiences that change you: going to war, having a kid, living through a big disaster like a flood or 9/11 …and earning a Ph.D.
I must admit, it was always fun to talk to him. I’d been a journalist since I was 18 and I was accustomed to interviewing celebrities. I never quite liked the fan/celebrity dynamic , but I was comfortable speaking with an actor or actress as two professionals, one on one. I was a film critic and correspondent for 20 years and then, for the last 20, I’ve covered theater. I’ve interviewed and had lunch with folks like Jerry Lewis, Richard Benjamin and Nick Nolte. I met Christopher Reeve and interviewed his wife, Dana, after his accident.
And Robert actually was only one of several folks connected with MFU that I met, interviewed and corresponded with. I spent a morning with David in a New York City pub; shared a lovely lunch with Doug Benton, George Lehr and Alvin Ganzer. And of course, I developed a friendship with Norman Felton, but those are stories for another time. What I can say is everyone, without exception, turned out to be great folks who were funny, professional and terribly nice.
So you’re probably wondering: but what was Robert really like? Well, after interviewing Robert and David, at first I was convinced that they were the opposite of their MFU characters. Robert was actually rather introverted, intellectual and bookish, not unlike some professors I’ve known. He was a little shy, too, and didn’t like mingling in large crowds.
But he could “turn it on” : I watched him do it. He could turn into “Robert Vaughn” and during these times, it was like an act. He would be witty and charming, but as the fans moved away, he would relax and become more matter of fact, down to earth. Whenever I interviewed him, he would deliver to me stock phrases, details, stories and jokes that I’d read in a hundred interviews before. Because I read or watched practically every single article or interview he’d ever done, I could recognize when he clicked into automatic.
But, as I’ve said, I am a longtime journalist. I know how to get the subject out of the prepared loop. I would ask Robert something he’d never been asked or push him on a point or two and then I’d get something more real. He loved taking politics. When he got going in that direction, he became more candid. He also had a variable memory. He didn’t always get the facts right about MFU, especially if it was something that he’d heard from someone else or had been repeated [often wrongly] for years. But he also remembered every single detail about that debate with Buckley.
I heard him on the Howard Stern show once [David even called in]. Stern can be really vulgar but that’s his bad boy persona. He’s actually a very good interviewer and knows how to get his guests to talk honestly. Stern is also an MFU fan ---he played UNCLE as a kid just like the rest of us ---and he treated Robert quite respectfully. Nevertheless, being Howard, the conversation turned not only to entertainment and politics, but to sex and he managed to get Robert to talk about things I’d never read in magazine. It was funny and genuine.
One of the most amusing exchanges Robert and I had in connection with Solo's sexual appeal was this: Robert noted that David attracted younger fans and he had an older fan base during the show. I told Robert how some fans say they saw Solo as a bit threatening, a bit too sexually aggressive, but that now that they are older, he's more attractive. "See?" he laughed. "That's why I had older women fans."
By comparison to Robert, David is far more like Illya. David did love technology and still does. Robert told me he could barely turn the key in the ignition and drive his car. Actually, his wife does most of the driving. When a Robert Vaughn web page and then Facebook page popped up, I knew Robert wasn’t actually writing it like David does.
But all of this makes sense because Solo was created by Norman but Illya was just a cipher. Robert had to fit into his character while David, in collaboration with Sam, and to some extent, scriptwriters like Allan Caillou, developed Illya himself.
During my diss work, I created a survey based on the famous Myers-Briggs personality test and asked the fans to take the test, but *as* Solo and *as* Kuryakin. I also asked Robert and David to take it. David declined but Robert consented. He said, though, that he’d “probably get it wrong” and he was correct. His results did not match the fans’ conception. He said that was because he filled out the survey as himself and he did not match the character he played. Even more interesting, of the fans’ results, Illya had one clear personality and one slight variation: Solo came out with about a half dozen different personalities. Indeed, the only thing folks agreed upon was that Solo was an extrovert.
Robert was definitely not and he knew it. But as I said, he could turn it on. This is actually what gave me my concept of Solo as an agent: it’s all a façade. A running theme in the St. Crispin’s Day Society universe is that when Solo sees his reflection in mirrors of the steel corridors of UNCLE, he knows what he’s looking at is not who he really is. Illya eventually learns this too, and he’s one of the few people who truly understands the core of his partner. Illya also thinks that’s the reason that Solo is more suited to spying, in some ways, than he is. He tends to the technology and details, leaving the manipulation of people to his partner.
So, even though I first thought the real personalities of Robert and David were opposite of their characters, I changed my mind as time passed. They were ---and weren’t ---their characters, depending upon how you analyzed it.
[To be continued]