Man From Uncle

Man-from-Uncle:https://gkhales.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/robertvaughnrip.html

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…Quote; “When the master of ceremonies suggested that Robert Vaughn’s speech on Vietnam would move them to “out-rage and indignation,” the students in Emerson Hall laughed for a full minute. “I’m serious,” pleaded the master of ceremonies. More laughter. Napoleon Solo was in another jam.

For an actor, Vaughn gave a terrible performance. He was tense and rigid. His lips were set as tight as his fisted grip on the podium. In his outrage and indignation he overran words, phrases, whole sentences like a boy delivering an oral report to the sixth grade. But he was not acting. The students, who had been expecting a sardonic, composed, and eminently hollow spy, responded with a standing ovation.

Vaughn has been giving these long, impassioned denunciations of the Vietnam war for a year. He operates on his own, relying only on his friend John Hackett, a free-lance writer who ghostwrites some of the speeches. His U.N.C.L.E. schedule permits him just one or two speeches a month; Vaughn selects forums–mostly universities and political clubs–which provide the maximum publicity. When President Johnson met Vaughn at a party recently, his only comment was, “Hello, Mr. Vaughn. You’re the speech-maker, is that right?”
His motive, like his private manner, is straightforward. Vaughn indulges a long standing, intellectual concern for current affairs. “It’s a matter of social consciousness,” he says. “After a year’s worth of research on Vietnam, I decided that there was no justification for our involvement there. I had gathered all his knowledge. I had to make use of it. And I was energized by the insanity of this policy of madness, by this Administration’s distortion of history.”

In a nation smothered by the blue-silver smog of television Vaughn is a celebrity. No Progressive Labor spokesman could be more appealing to construction workers, taxi cab drivers and unemployed factory hands than the glamorous man from U.N.C.L.E. William Fulbright can’t compete with him for the attention of middle class clerks and housewives. He is very much aware of the possibilities created by his star status, and he has chosen to utilize them for the benefit of the anti-war cause. “Everyone doesn’t have the podium I have to speak from,” he says. “My audiences may come out of sheer curiosity, but they are courteous and they stay to listen.”………….

…”A proud graduate of Evelyn Wood’s speed-reading institute, Vaughn is quick to tell you that he receives and reads “54 magazines–from the Peking Review to the National Review.” He has researched all of the State Department’s papers on Vietnam and reads the Congressional Record daily. He corresponds with Senators McGovern, Church, Morris, Gruening, Kennedy, Hatfield, Clark, and Hartke. And he is writing a Ph.D. thesis on “McCarthyism in the American Theatre” for the Department of Communications at the University of Southern California. When he finishes, he will teach a one-night-a-week seminar in International Relations.

“I don’t have many actor friends,” says Vaughn. “I find others more stimulating intellectually. Actors are too involved with self, less involved with the outer, real world.” An exception is Steve Allen whom Vaughn respectfully describes as a consummate intellectual. “He has a library of books and clipped periodicals which covers from floor to ceiling the walls of his study.”

This determined, well-documented intellectualism relaxes when Vaughn discusses Vietnam. Of those politicians who support the war he says, “I have made an evaluation of their psyches and makeup, and I fear that I come up with nothing but negative responses.” Slowly, the stiff, contrived prose becomes washed with delightful vehemence. “I think that people who don’t object to the war are either ignorant or indifferent. Let’s face it, the guys on my side are good guys, just good guys,” says the good guy from U.N.C.L.E. “The other guys are not good guys. That’s all there is to it.” Go to: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1967/5/17/robert-vaughn-pwhen-the-master-of/
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