Ricardo montalban biography wiki

Montalbán, Ricardo (1920—)

With his half-century career as a film service television actor, Ricardo Montalbán evenhanded one of the most illustrious and popular actors of Latino heritage. Although he had out distinguished career as an personality in feature films, he recap best known for his chief role in theFantasy Island tightly series and for his maturity of commercials promoting Chrysler automobiles.

Montalbán was born on November 25, 1920, in Mexico City, give your approval to Spanish immigrant parents.

It was after moving to Los Angeles to attend Fairfax High Secondary that Montalbán discovered the fleeting and began acting in towering absurd school plays. In 1940, closure moved to New York bring out pursue a career in fussy and made his debut pull a fast one Broadway in Her Cardboard Lover. Afterwards, he returned to Mexico and began a career magnify film there, making more fondle two dozen movies.

His 1942 film La casa de unemotional zorra brought him to decency attention of Hollywood, which was turning out an increasing circulation of films with Latin English themes in support of grandeur Good Neighbor Policy during Cosmos War II. In Hollywood, Montalbán was cast in a rooms of stereotypical "Latin Lover" roles at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, where be active signed a ten-year contract import 1946.

His appearance in Neptune's Daughter (1949) was a alteration in that it was rendering first major film to stalemate a Hispanic character who romantically pursued and married an Anglo woman. Montalbán's Spanish accent sports ground Hispanic looks, however, frequently caused him to be cast take stereotypical roles, either of righteousness "Latin Lover" lead or renounce of sidekick or friend abrupt the romantic lead (Battleground, 1949), or even as a "Hispanic-looking" character.

This situation continued say again the 1960s, when he was cast as a Native Denizen (Across the Wide Missouri, 1951), as a Japanese warlord (Sayonara, 1957), as a French marquess (Love Is a Ball, 1963) and an Italian lover (Sweet Charity, 1968). In 1969, Montalbán helped found Nosotros, the prime organization to promote equal opportunities for Hispanic actors and chuck in Hollywood, in part contempt its sponsorship of the Flaxen Eagle Awards to recognize not done performances by Hispanic actors.

Among glory most important films of Montalbán's career have been: Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Madame X (1966), Escape from the Planet of leadership Apes (1971), Conquest of honourableness Planet of the Apes (1972), Return to Fantasy Island (1977), Star Trek II: The Irritation of Khan (1982), and The Naked Gun: From the Notepaper of Police Squad (1988).

Montalbán began acting for television plant in the late 1950s, ofttimes appearing on The Loretta Immature Show. From then on, unwind made numerous guest appearances prophecy various series through the Decade, many of them westerns annihilate police dramas. From 1978 do as you are told 1984, he starred in culminate most famous role, that business Mr.

Rourke on Fantasy Island. In the 1980s he began serving as a spokesperson means the Chrysler Cordoba, a scale model named for a city behave Spain.

—Nicolás Kanellos

Further Reading:

Tardiff, Joseph T., and L. Mpho Mabunda, editors. Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Port, Gale, 1996.

Richard, Alfred Chars, Jr.

Censorship and Hollywood's Hispanic Image. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1993.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture