David McCallum, Star of Hit TV Series ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ and ‘NCIS,’ Dies at 90 

US actor David Mccallum poses, on June 10, 2009 during a photocall presenting the TV serie "Navy NCIS : Naval Criminal Investigative Service" at the 49th Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco. (AFP)
US actor David Mccallum poses, on June 10, 2009 during a photocall presenting the TV serie "Navy NCIS : Naval Criminal Investigative Service" at the 49th Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco. (AFP)
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David McCallum, Star of Hit TV Series ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ and ‘NCIS,’ Dies at 90 

US actor David Mccallum poses, on June 10, 2009 during a photocall presenting the TV serie "Navy NCIS : Naval Criminal Investigative Service" at the 49th Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco. (AFP)
US actor David Mccallum poses, on June 10, 2009 during a photocall presenting the TV serie "Navy NCIS : Naval Criminal Investigative Service" at the 49th Monte Carlo Television Festival in Monaco. (AFP)

Actor David McCallum, who became a teen heartthrob in the hit series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." in the 1960s and was the eccentric medical examiner in the popular "NCIS" 40 years later, has died. He was 90.

McCallum died Monday of natural causes surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital, CBS said in a statement.

"David was a gifted actor and author, and beloved by many around the world. He led an incredible life, and his legacy will forever live on through his family and the countless hours on film and television that will never go away," said a statement from CBS.

Scottish-born McCallum had been doing well appearing in such films "A Night to Remember" (about the Titanic), "The Great Escape" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (as Judas). But it was "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." that made the blond actor with the Beatlesque haircut a household name in the mid-'60s.

The success of the James Bond books and films had set off a chain reaction, with secret agents proliferating on both large and small screens. Indeed, Bond creator Ian Fleming contributed some ideas as "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." was being developed, according to Jon Heitland's "The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Book."

The show, which debuted in 1964, starred Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo, an agent in a secretive, high-tech squad of crime fighters whose initials stood for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Despite the Cold War, the agency had an international staff, with McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, Solo’s Russian sidekick.

The role was relatively small at first, McCallum recalled, adding in a 1998 interview that "I’d never heard of the word ‘sidekick’ before."

The show drew mixed reviews but eventually caught on, particularly with teenage girls attracted by McCallum’s good looks and enigmatic, intellectual character. By 1965, Illya was a full partner to Vaughn’s character and both stars were mobbed during personal appearances.

The series lasted until 1968. Vaughn and McCallum reunited in 1983 for a nostalgic TV movie, "The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.," in which the agents were lured out of retirement to save the world once more.

McCallum returned to television in 2003 in another series with an agency known by its initials — CBS’ "NCIS." He played Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard, a bookish pathologist for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, an agency handling crimes involving the Navy or the Marines. Mark Harmon played the NCIS boss.

Co-star Lauren Holly took to X, formerly Twitter, to mourn: "You were the kindest man. Thank you for being you." The previously announced 20th anniversary "NCIS" marathon on Monday night will now include an "in memoriam" card in remembrance of McCallum.

The series built an audience gradually, eventually reaching the roster of top 10 shows. McCallum, who lived in New York, stayed in a one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica when "NCIS" was in production.

"He was a scholar and a gentleman, always gracious, a consummate professional, and never one to pass up a joke. From day one, it was an honor to work with him and he never let us down. He was, quite simply, a legend," said a statement from "NCIS" Executive Producers Steven D. Binder and David North.

McCallum’s work with "U.N.C.L.E." brought him two Emmy nominations, and he got a third as an educator struggling with alcoholism in a 1969 Hallmark Hall of Fame drama called "Teacher, Teacher."

In 1975, he had the title role in a short-lived science fiction series, "The Invisible Man," and from 1979 to 1982 he played Steel in a British science fiction series, "Sapphire and Steel." Over the years, he also appeared in guest shots in many TV shows, including "Murder, She Wrote" and "Sex and the City."

He appeared on Broadway in a 1968 comedy, "The Flip Side," and in a 1999 revival of "Amadeus" starring Michael Sheen and David Suchet. He also was in several off-Broadway productions.

Largely based in the US from the 1960s onward, McCallum was a longtime American citizen, telling The Associated Press in 2003 that "I have always loved the freedom of this country and everything it stands for. And I live here, and I like to vote here."

David Keith McCallum was born in Glasgow in 1933. His parents were musicians; his father, also named David, played violin, his mother played cello. When David was 3, the family moved to London, where David Sr. played with the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic.

Young David attended the Royal Academy of Music where he learned the oboe. He decided he wasn’t good enough, so he turned to theater, studying briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. But "I was a small, emaciated blond with a caved chest, so there weren’t an awful lot of parts for me," he commented in a Los Angeles Times interview in 2009.

After time out for military service, he returned to London and began getting work on live television and movies. In 1957 he appeared in "Robbery Under Arms," an adventure set in early Australia, with a rising actress, Jill Ireland. The couple married that same year.

In 1963, McCallum was part of the large cast of "The Great Escape" and he and his wife became friendly with Charles Bronson, also in the film. Ireland eventually fell in love with Bronson and she and McCallum divorced in 1967. She married Bronson in 1968.

"It all worked out fine," McCallum said in 2009, "because soon after that I got together with Katherine (Carpenter, a former model) and we’ve been very happily married for 42 years."

McCallum had three sons from his first marriage, Paul, Jason and Valentine, and a son and daughter from his second, Peter and Sophie. Jason died of an overdose.

"He was a true Renaissance man — he was fascinated by science and culture and would turn those passions into knowledge. For example, he was capable of conducting a symphony orchestra and (if needed) could actually perform an autopsy, based on his decades-long studies for his role on NCIS," Peter McCallum said in a statement.

In 2007, when he was working on "NCIS," McCallum told a reporter: "I’ve always felt the harder I work, the luckier I get. I believe in serendipitous things happening, but at the same time, dedicating yourself to what you do is the best way to get along in this life."



When Did Disney Villains Stop Being So Villainous? New Show Suggests They May Just Be Misunderstood

An actor portraying Captain Hook from Peter Pan performs on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP)
An actor portraying Captain Hook from Peter Pan performs on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP)
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When Did Disney Villains Stop Being So Villainous? New Show Suggests They May Just Be Misunderstood

An actor portraying Captain Hook from Peter Pan performs on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP)
An actor portraying Captain Hook from Peter Pan performs on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Monday, April 18, 2022. (AP)

Cruella de Vil wanted to turn Dalmatian puppies into fur coats, Captain Hook tried to bomb Peter Pan and Maleficent issued a curse of early death for Aurora.

But wait, maybe these Disney villains were just misunderstood? That's the premise of a new musical show at Walt Disney World that has some people wondering: When did Disney's villains stop wanting to be so ... villainous?

The live show, "Disney Villains: Unfairly Ever After," debuts May 27 at Disney's Hollywood Studios park at the Orlando, Florida, resort. In the show, the three baddies of old-school Disney movies plead their cases before an audience that they are the most misunderstood villains of them all.

"We wanted to tell a story that's a little different than what's been told before: Which one of them has been treated the most unfairly ever after?" Mark Renfrow, a creative director of the show, said in a promotional video.

That hook - the narrative kind, not the captain - is scratching some Disney observers the wrong way.

"I think it's wonderful when you still have stories where villains are purely villainous," said Benjamin Murphy, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Florida State University's campus in Panama. "When you have villains reveling in their evil, it can be amusing and satisfying."

Disney has some precedent for putting villains in a sympathetic light, or at least explaining how they got to be so evil. The 2021 film, "Cruella," for instance, presents a backstory for the dog-hater played by actor Emma Stone that blames her villainy on her birth mother never wanting her.

Other veins of pop culture have rethought villains too, perhaps none more famously than the book, theatrical musical and movie versions of "Wicked," the reinterpretation of the Wicked Witch of the West character from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."

The blockbuster success of "Wicked, " which was based on the 1995 novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," sparked the trend of rethinking villains in popular entertainment, Murphy said.

"With trends like that, the formula is repeated and repeated until it's very predictable: Take a villain and make them sympathetic," he said.

The centuries-old fairy tales upon which several Disney movies are based historically were meant to teach children a lesson, whether it was not to get close to wolves (Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs) or trust strange, old women in the woods (Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel).

But they often made marginalized people into villains - older women, people of color or those on the lower socioeconomic scale, said Rebecca Rowe, an assistant professor of children's literature at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

The trend toward making villains more sympathetic started in the late 1980s and 1990s as children's media took off. There was a desire to present villains in a manner that was more complicated and less black and white, as there was an overall cultural push toward emphasizing acceptance, she said.

"The problem is everyone has swung so hard into that message, that we have kind of lost the villainous villains," Rowe said. "There is value in the villainous villains. There are people who just do evil things. Sometimes there is a reason for it, but sometimes not. Just because there is a reason doesn't mean it negates the harm."

Whether it's good for children to identify with villains is complicated. There is a chance they adopt the villains' traits if it's what they identify with, but then some scholars believe it's not a bad thing for children to empathize with characters who often are part of marginalized communities, Rowe said.

The Disney villains also tend to appeal to adults more than children. They also appreciate the villains' campiness, with some "Disney princesses" gladly graduating into "evil queens."

Erik Paul, an Orlando resident who has had a year-round pass to Disney World for the past decade, isn't particularly fond of the villains, but understands why Disney would want to frame them in a more sympathetic light in a show dedicated just to them.

"I know friends who go to Hollywood Studios mainly to see the villain-related activities," Paul said. "Maybe that's why people like the villains because they feel misunderstood as well, and they feel a kinship to the villains."