Ricardo Montalban, Actor: 1920 – 2009
Ricardo Montalban died today at age 88.
It seems wrong somehow to sum up an entire man’s career by one TV commercial, one TV role and one movie role, but having grown up in the ’70s and early ’80s, Ricardo Montalban will always be the Chrysler Cordoba guy, Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island and of course the villain Khan in the Star Trek TV show and the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
I suppose this would be a good time to wax nostalgic about his healthy Hollywood career in the ’40s and ’50s, but that’s not how I remember him. He’s the enigmatic (but slightly creepy in the original pilot) man in the white suit that kept me up past my bedtime when I was a kid. You know what? That’s not a bad thing at all. RIP Mr. Montalban.
Filed under: Obituaries
Tags: Ricardo Montalban
Here I was thinking how apt your use of the “soft Corinthian leather accent” metaphor was in the other thread. Now I see that it was also a sly pop culture reference.
:) the monkeys and I try to be multi-faceted around here.
There will be fajitas in heaven for him. Sad news. He was awesome in the first Naked Gun movie too.
Montalban did some decent stuff back in the 1950s. In a way he resembled the older star Gilbert Roland, but Montalban added danger to the excitement — including when it was sexual. Along those lines, he was awfully hot, as well, and has had more than one steamy love scene. One of them, with Shelley Winters when she was still a sex bomb, was about as lustful and dirty as you could get back then (“Let No Man Write My Epitaph”).
I fear Joel that people who haven’t seen that particular infomercial will wonder if you’re simply stereotyping a Mexican actor. I’d like to disabuse anyone of that notion right now.
I knew someone would come along and have a perspective on Montalban’s earlier career. Thank you for that Pierre.
Nice comparison with Gilbert (The Bad and the Beautiful) Roland, Pierre.
I completely agree with Pierre that Montalban “added danger to the excitement”; even in roles that were written as “straight” he brought a flair and a quietly sibilating intensity. In the John Sturges film, Mystery Street, Montalban takes on a role that demanded long, potentially dry passages of forensic exposition, but I could never take my eyes off him (or tune my ears out). Philip Leacock–who I just recently praised in a recent review of the Steve McQueen-starring The War Lover–directed Shelley Winters and Montalban’s scenes in Let No Man Write My Epitaph with a fine emphasis on the “lust” about which Pierre writes. Montalban and Winters had terrific chemistry, and had played quite well off of one another eight years earlier in William Wellman’s My Man and I (which was an engrossing “socially conscious” film about white American-Hispanic Mexican relations).
His television work, and his theatrically magnetic performance in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, are likewise worth bringing up on this day, among other fine turns he gave.
For a young man you sure have an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Alexander.
KHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!
He will be missed.
Wonderful thread–he certainly will be missed, and yes, Alexander’s submission among others here was terrific. I am a big Star Trek fan like Matt Lucas, so I know well what this actor meant to the original series (“Space Seed”) and of course THE WRATH OF KHAN.
Yeah, I wondered that myself after i realized the Watercooler post was separate from this one. Oh well, won’t be the first time an attempt at innocent humor was completely misread. I meant the man no harm and was simply joking about the same infommercial that was mentioned elsewhere.
I like what Pierre wrote and I agree that his greatest asset was his incredible charisma coupled with his sheer sexuality. He could have been the Antonio Banderas of his time were Hispanic actors treated with more respect in his day. As it was, his career was incredibly prolific and no matter what, we’ll always have Khan and Mr Rourke.
Don’t worry man, you’re covered.
I watched the very first FANTASY ISLAND tv movie, which was indeed more sinister. I would be demanding my money back.
At let us not forget Eugene Levy’s awesome impersonation of Montalban (with John Candy as “Patoo”) in the brilliant SCTV sketch parody.
Dos Equis should have hired Ricardo Montalban to do a few ads for them, he could have done their “most interesting man in the world” bit perfectly (he has a Spanish accent too)