httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PZWjJ2m4Sg
At the height of the show’s popularity, Mr. Vaughn said he was receiving 70,000 fan letters a month.
“The whole show is a joke. It’s an extension of the Bond joke into a gigantic cartoon in prime time,” Mr. Vaughn told The Saturday Evening Post in an 1965 interview, to which, the magazine noted, he arrived wearing a custom-tailored Italian suit and a black silk tie.
At the time, Mr. Vaughn was seemingly more focused on politics than show business: He often spoke publicly against the war in Vietnam.
Mr. Vaughn became national chairman of an organization called Dissenting Democrats in 1967 and debated the war with William F. Buckley Jr. on Mr. Buckley’s television program, “Firing Line” – a bout that Newsday, on Long Island, said Mr. Vaughn had won.
Photo Mr. Vaughn befriended Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and was a frequent guest at Hickory Hill, Kennedy’s estate in McLean, Va., w Mr. Vaughn played touch football with luminaries like the writer Art Buchwald and the astronaut John Glenn.
Robert Francis Vaughn was born on Nov. 22, 1932, in New York City into a theatrically inclined household.
His father, Gerald Walter Vaughn, was heard on radio series like “Gangbusters” and “Crime Doctor,” and his mother, the former Marcella Gaudel, appeared in a 1931 Broadway production of “Dracula.” The couple divorced when Mr. Vaughn was an infant and he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, w he was partly reared by grandparents.
With his Hollywood stature on the decline, they moved to a castle-like stone home in Ridgefield, Conn., in 1981.Mr. Vaughn’s survivors also include a daughter, Caitlin Vaughn; a son, Cassidy; and several grandchildren.
Mr. Vaughn continued to work as an actor into his 80s. In 2012 he appeared on two British television series, “Hustle” and “Coronation Street.” He was seen on an episode of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” last year.