On the heels of the death of Patrick McGoohan comes news of the loss of Ricardo Montalbán. Montalbán died on January 14, 2009, at his home in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 88 due to “complications from advancing age” according to his son-in-law Gilbert Smith. It is known that he suffered a spinal injury in 1951 that grew worse over the years, resulting in surgery in 1993 which only exacerbated the situation, eventually confining him to a wheelchair.
Montalbán is most famously known as Mr. Roarke from the 1978-1984 television series Fantasy Island as well as for a series of TV commercials where he talked about the “soft Corinthian leather” used for the interior of the Chrysler Cordoba in the mid-1970’s. To Star Trek fans he is fondly remembered as Khan Noonien Singh in the 1967 episode “Space Seed” and the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. My first recollection of him is his portrayal of Señor Armando in Escape From the Planet of the Apes and it’s immediate follow-up Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. In whatever role he took on, Montalbán always had a refined grace and that unmistakably rich, deep and eloquently accented voice. It’s a real shame that his increasing back pain caused him to appear as an actor less and less over the years and he will be missed.
