LAST OF THE SEVEN

Over the past few weeks, one of the TV shows we’ve been catching up on during the long evenings has been the early seasons of “Hustle”, the BBC series about a group of con artists fleecing the not-so-great and the not-so-good out of their (usually) ill-gotten gains like a modern take on the legend of “Robin Hood” but with a much more ambiguous moral compass. It’s a pretty good show, despite the self-justification of its credo “You can’t con an honest person” sometimes not quite ringing true.

One of the cornerstones of the show is the veteran American actor Robert Vaughn, the one time Napoleon Solo in the 1960s spy series “The Man from UNCLE” and Harry Rule in Gerry Anderson’s 1970s series “The Protectors” who has appeared in almost every episode across the seven years of “Hustle” shown so far and, although an eighth and final series was recently announced, I'm pretty sure he will be in it.

By a strange quirk of fate, and perhaps an ironic one when you consider the character he played in the film, Robert Vaughn is also, rather sadly, the very last survivor of the original “Seven” from the famous and now rather iconic 1960 John Sturges movie “The Magnificent Seven”, that bank holiday staple with the fabulous and legendary Elmer Bernstein score. Oddly enough, he only began his successful run in “Hustle” after the last of the others had died, demonstrating a kind of career longevity that can only be admired. The iconic movie itself has remained hugely popular for all the intervening years, of course, and is (as is well known) an adaptation of Akira Kurusawa’s 1954 film “The Seven Samurai”. Robert Vaughn played the fear-filled Lee, who, as you can imagine, with such a character flaw, was always unlikely to make the final ride into the sunset. Just who the original members of “The Magnificent Seven” were remains a regular pub quiz question, so, just for the sake of completeness, this is who the rest of them were and what became of them.

Yul Brynner who played the leader of the “Seven”, Chris, is probably best known for playing the King of Siam in “The King and I”, the role for which he first shaved his head which gave him his iconic look. Yul Brynner would be the only actor from the original seven to return in just one of the sequels. Subsequently Chris would be played by the much sturdier actor George Kennedy and then the much more mustachioed Lee Van Cleef (“The Bad” in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”), neither of whom would adopt any of the lean, still and iconic look of hairlessness and dark clothing that Yul Brynner chose for the original movie. In fact it would be Yul Brynner himself who would bring that look back to the big screen when he played the robotic gunslinger in “Westworld” a decade or more later. Interestingly, amongst the Hollywood backstage set, it is Yul Brynner and Clint Eastwood whose names are still regularly mentioned as being the “best” at handling handguns, although they never got to face off on screen. Yul Brynner died on the 10th of October 1985.

The iconic king of cool, Steve McQueen died nearly five years before Yul Brynner, on the 7th of November 1980, despite being ten years younger than him. Steve McQueen really needs no introduction, possibly being the screen icon of the 1970s after a string of movies like “The Great Escape”, “The Thomas Crown Affair”, “Papillon”, “The Towering Inferno” and “Bullitt” made him not only the highest paid star in the world, but also something of a legend, and with his passion for motor racing and beautiful women, quite a notorious legend at that. He did also once play a 28 year-old teenager in “The Blob” (1958), but his career seemed to survive it. If you watch him very carefully in “The Magnificent Seven” he is always attempting to do something in shot to draw attention towards his character, something that Yul Brynner really didn’t like. His character, Vin, would return is at least one of the sequels, but by then Steve McQueen’s star was already in the ascendant, and he himself did not return, making “Return of the Seven” more of a “Return of the One”. The more cynical amongst you might even suggest that the various groups Chris manages to bring together across the four films could hardly really be described as being all that “Magnificent” anyway, given how few of them actually survive to fight another day, but that is probably to miss the point of a redemption movie.

James Coburn (Britt, the knifeman) died on the 18th of November 2002, and during his long career gained something of a reputation for light comedy roles in the “Flint” movies, but gained a best supporting actor Academy Award for “Affliction” late in his life. He shared Steve McQueen’s love of fast cars, is credited with introducing him to an interest in Ferrari motor cars, and appeared with him again in “The Great Escape”.

Brad Dexter who played Harry Luck in the movie was 85 years old when he died on December 11th 2002, less than a month after James Coburn. Brad Dexter was famously “the man who dropped Sinatra” after they fell out in later life, although he was also the man who saved Sinatra from drowning in 1964. Usually a supporting player in a number of rugged character roles in movies like the classic film noir “The Asphalt Jungle”, “The Magnificent Seven” seems to represent a career high for him that he seldom achieved in later life.

The German actor Horst Buchholz who played the young Mexican hothead Chico, died on the 3rd of March 2003 and, despite being the youngest member of the original “Seven” never really gained the kind of international fame that befell many of his co-stars. Before becoming one of the “Seven”, he also appeared in the John and Hayley Mills movie “Tiger Bay” and whilst he managed to keep working in Hollywood, appearing in some rather fine films, those two films probably remain his best known performances.

Charles Bronson played the astonishingly named Bernardo O’Reilly and died on the 30th of August 2003, meaning that four of the “Seven” all died within a year of each other. A notoriously “stony-faced” actor whose performances generally displayed much more depth and subtlety than his reputation suggested, he reached the grand old age of 81 after a successful movie career sadly now mostly remembered for his five vigilante “Death Wish” movies.

Interestingly and slightly ironically, the chief of the band of wicked bandits which were abusing the villagers in the original movie, Calvera, was played by Eli Wallach, who was also in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” alongside Chris version 03, Lee Van Cleef, and worked with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe on “The Misfits” and has so-far outlived nearly all of the “Seven”. He is, at the time of writing, still going strong at the grand old age of 95.

Robert Vaughn remains working at a sprightly 78 years old, and, in having turned to an on-screen life of crime in “Hustle”, perhaps helps to prove that it pays to be a villain after all.