Ricardo Montalbán, one of Hollywood’s first Latino leading men, had a long career as a television and movie actor but whose lingering fame perhaps owes most to a less august role as the debonair concierge of “Fantasy Island”.
Every week on “Fantasy Island,” a fairy tale of wish fulfillment and exotic luxury that was shown on ABC from 1978 to 1984, a planeload of visitors with unachieved dreams flew in to a remote resort somewhere in the Pacific and were greeted by their dream facilitators, the sleek and suavely welcoming Mr. Roarke, played by Mr. Montalbán, and his assistant, an irrepressibly spirited dwarf named Tattoo, played by Hervé Villechaize. They became one of television’s most legendary odd couples.
Though Mr. Roarke became Mr. Montalbán’s signature role, it was a mere bump in the timeline of a career that spanned decades, media and genres. Mr. Montalbán embodied stereotypes, fought them and transcended them in his years in show business. His entire reputation, both as smooth Latin seducer and parodist of a smooth Latin seducer, was capsulized in a television advertisement from the mid-1970s in which he served as pitchman for the Cordoba, a luxury car being introduced by Chrysler. He purred over the automobile’s assets, including the seats, upholstered, he said, in “soft, Corinthian leather,” a phrase that became a campy giggle-inducer, especially after it became known that there is no such thing as Corinthian leather, from Corinth or anywhere else: the description was just a marketing invention.
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino was born in Mexico City on Nov. 25, 1920, and moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to live with his older brother Carlos, who was pursuing a career in show business. The brothers traveled to New York in 1940, and Ricardo landed a bit part in “Her Cardboard Lover,” a play starring Tallulah Bankhead.
The next year Mr. Montalbán returned to Mexico, where his mother was dying. He made a dozen Spanish-language films in Mexico, becoming a star. In 1944 he married Georgiana Young, the half-sister of the film actress Loretta Young. The couple went on to raise four children in Los Angeles: Mark, Victor, Laura and Anita. Georgiana Young died in 2007.
Mr. Montalbán made his Hollywood debut in 1947 in “Fiesta,” a musical in which he was cast as an aspiring toreador with a twin sister, improbably played by the movie’s star, Esther Williams. They also starred together a year later in “On an Island With You.” The next year he was signed as a contract player for MGM, and specialized in Latin-lover roles, perfecting if not defining the stereotype. He played opposite Cyd Charisse (“Mark of the Renegade”), Shelley Winters (“My Man and I”) and Pier Angeli (“Sombrero”), among others. A 1953 film in which he starred with Lana Turner was actually called “Latin Lovers.”
Like other minority actors of the time, Mr. Montalbán, with his dark good looks and his Spanish accent, seemed to be a kind of racial utility player. This was the era of the western, and he repeatedly played American Indians, including a Blackfoot war chief in “Across the Wide Missouri.” He appeared as an ancient Babylonian in “The Queen of Babylon” and as a Japanese Kabuki actor in “Sayonara.” In the Broadway musical “Jamaica,” set on a mythical Caribbean island, he starred opposite Lena Horne in a cast that was, aside from himself, entirely African-American. For his performance he was nominated for a Tony in 1958.
As a performer Mr. Montalbán was fluid and broad, the kind of actor who could telegraph his intent with intelligence and humor. His ability to move easily between comedy and drama kept him busy long after his beefcake appeal began to fade. Throughout the ’50s and ’60s Mr. Montalbán worked constantly, mostly in television, including performances on his sister-in-law’s series, “The Loretta Young Show.”
In 1971, troubled by the way he was asked to portray Mexicans, he helped to found Nosotros, an advocacy group for Latinos working in the movie and television industry. As president of the organization, he later said: “I put my career aside and dedicated my heart and soul for over a year and a half to this new organization, going to radio and television to talk about it, talking to directors, producers, writers. I received tremendous support, but there were also some negative repercussions. I was accused of being a militant and as a result I lost jobs.”
In 1967, during the first season of “Star Trek,” he was a guest star as Khan Noonien Singh, a tyrannical superhuman villain; he reprised the role in the 1982 “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” giving a performance that was gleefully and confidently weird.
“With his fierce profile, long white hair, manful décolletage and Space Age jewelry, Mr. Montalbán looks like either the world’s oldest rock star or its hippest Indian chief,” Janet Maslin wrote, reviewing the film in The New York Times. “Either way, he looks terrific.”
In recent years Mr. Montalbán found work in children’s entertainment, appearing in “Spy Kids” movies, and providing the voice of characters on the television series “Dora the Explorer” and in the 2006 film “The Ant Bully,” in which he plays the leader of an ant colony’s ant council.
“I always had Ricardo Montalbán in my head,” John A. Davis, the director and writer of “The Ant Bully,” said in an interview. “I don’t know why, but I just always heard that voice because he’s so noble and powerful and strong.”
Da The New York Times, 16 gennaio 2009
