Remembering Khan

This is from a writer’s blog I follow, Mark Evanier, who posted this when Montalban died. If you read all of it, you will see what great person Ricardo Montalban was.

In the early eighties, I was a writer on a short-lived comedy show exec-produced by Dick Clark called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour…not to be confused with at least two other shows that have appeared under that name. This was an ABC replacement series which, in format, was very much like Laugh-In. We even had as our producer Chris Beard, who’d been one of the main creative forces behind the original Laugh-In, and we taped on the same stage where that show had been produced. The cast included Arsenio Hall, Thom Sharp, Rod Hull, Peter Isacksen and, in their pre-Saturday Night Live days, Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson.
Naturally, we had cameo guests. Mr. Montalban was then starring in Fantasy Island and they were about to replace Herve Villachieze in the role of Mr. Roarke’s valet with Christopher Hewett. One day, the writing staff was informed about 11 AM that Mssrs. Montalban and Hewett would be there at 3 PM to tape something we would write in the next hour or so. One of the other writers came up with that something and Chris Beard approved it.
The way it worked with cameos was that the celeb would show up and the producers (in this case, a clever lady named Bonny Dore) would grab whatever writers were around to explain the script to them, perhaps acting it out and adjusting it, if need be. I was loitering on the set when Montalban and Hewett arrived and so was conscripted by Bonny for the occasion. Ricardo — he asked everyone to call him that — couldn’t have been more charming. (Christopher Hewett was wonderful, too. I told the story of that encounter in this piece I posted when he left us.)
A couple of the other writers and I acted out the routine for our cameo guests. In it, a very attractive blonde lady with much cleavage thought he really was Mr. Roarke, granter of fantasies, and begged him to arrange her fondest longing, which was to have sexual relations with Ricardo Montalban. The punch line was something like, “I think we can work something out.” You might think most actors, even the gay ones, would like that image — beautiful women lusting after him and all that — but to our surprise, Ricardo wasn’t delighted.
He said, “Ah, that is a very funny routine you have written, gentlemen. Very funny, indeed. I am embarrassed to say I have a slight problem with it. You see, I have been married for close to forty years. My wife was a very famous actress and we have four children, and this is well known. For much of my life, I have attempted to counteract some of the more egregious stereotypes about Hispanics, including the image of the Latin Lover who sleeps with every woman who comes along…”
Now, ordinarily when an actor declines to perform a piece of material, you want to pull out a derringer and tell him, “Read the lines as written or I’ll blow away your kneecaps.” But Mr. Montalban was so gracious and he said what he said with so much charm…
And then he added this. He said, “I understand that to get a joke, you need to make fun of something about me and that is fine. Make fun of my age or my hair or my clothes or whatever you want. I trust you will make it funny.”
Well, that sent us scurrying to make the man happy. “Give us ten minutes,” we told him and then the other writers and I ran out into the hallway and huddled to come up with something else. We were constrained because we couldn’t add props or actors or change wardrobe. We had to use the same set and the same blonde with the same set. Still, we came up with a joke we thought would work…a joke built on the premise (obviously not valid) that Ricardo Montalban was a man of extraordinary ego who thought he was the biggest star in the world.
Ricardo liked what we came up with and twenty minutes later, it was all taped and done. Before he left the stage, he made a special effort to seek out the writers and to thank us. I thanked him for being so cooperative and I said something like, “I guess we made you look a little vain in the sketch…”
“Oh no,” he said. “That is not a problem. I just did not want people to think I would ever cheat on my wife. I don’t mind if they think I am a conceited asshole but I would not want them to think I would ever cheat on my wife.”
Later, I told the story to a friend who wrote for Fantasy Island. He said, “That’s Ricardo. This would be such a wonderful business if all actors had even a third as much class.” That’s true. Ricardo Montalban was talented and handsome and gifted and a true gentleman. And he was definitely not a conceited asshole.

On a somewhat related topic, my best buddy asked me to go with him to an evening with William Shatner back on September 27 in the Carnegie Library and Music Hall in Homestead, PA. The Wrath of Khan was shown and then Bill Shatner, 93 years old, gave a talk for 90 minutes.

Shatner did talk about the run up to Star Trek II. He did not talk about Montalban much but it was an entertaining evening.

People my age…I am 61…will remember the mid 1970s Chrysler Cordoba ads featuring Ricardo Montalban and “rich Corinthian leather”.

@Penguins Fan — But do you remember the SCTV skit about Ricardo Montalban’s School of Fine Acting? It’s on YouTube if you need a reminder.

Ricardo Montalban was certainly what Khan Noonien Singh was not: a superior man.