{"id":1211,"date":"2009-01-15T03:43:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T03:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/ricardo-montalban-rip.html"},"modified":"2009-01-15T03:43:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T03:43:00","slug":"ricardo-montalban-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/ricardo-montalban-rip.html","title":{"rendered":"Ricardo Montalban, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291441488587883490\"<\/a>The wires reported yesterday the death of Ricardo Montalban<\/a>, at 88. Among other things, he was the brother-in-law of legendary Hollywood Catholic Loretta Young<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Those of us Of A Certain Age remember the strange and smooth stylings of Ricardo Montalban as he intoned on television, week after week, “Welcome to Fantasy Island<\/a>!,” while the weird little dwarf Tattoo (Herv\u00c3\u00a9 Villechaize) offered his loyal support. (The diminutive Villechaize will forever be remembered for his own catch-phrase “Da plane, da plane!”) <\/p>\n

Around the same time, the mid-1970s, Montalban became legendary for his commercials for Chrysler, where he extolled the virtues of seats that were made of “soft Corinthian leather” — the surprising but compelling kind of detail that, somehow, St. Paul never mentioned in his letters. <\/p>\n

And, it turns out, there’s a reason<\/a> for that: <\/p>\n

Mr. Montalb\u00c3\u00a1n 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assets, including the seats, upholstered, he said, in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153soft, Corinthian leather,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RIP, Ricardo.<\/p>\n

You can relive the opening moments of “Fantasy Island” below — and what a lineup of guest stars! <\/p>\n

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The wires reported yesterday the death of Ricardo Montalban, at 88. Among other things, he was the brother-in-law of legendary Hollywood Catholic Loretta Young. Those of us Of A Certain Age remember the strange and smooth stylings of Ricardo Montalban as he intoned on television, week after week, “Welcome to Fantasy Island!,” while the weird…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nRicardo Montalban, RIP - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/01\/ricardo-montalban-rip.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ricardo Montalban, RIP - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The wires reported yesterday the death of Ricardo Montalban, at 88. 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