It is one of the great injustices of Hollywood history that Ricardo Montalban — who passed away last week at the age of 88 — never became a big star. Oh sure, he worked pretty steadily from the 1940s through the ’80s and continued to make appearances or voiceovers in various things right on up to the present (according to IMDB, he did an episode of Family Guy just last year). Just about everyone knew his name and silky voice, and we all loved him. But looking through his filmography, it appears that he was rarely the lead, the hero. Even in Fantasy Island, the late-70s/early-80s television series for which most people probably remember him these days, he got only a few minutes of screentime per episode. He functioned on that show very much like Rod Serling in the old Twilight Zones: all he did was set up the plot for that week’s episode, maybe pop back in midway through to provide some encouragement or vital information, and then he summed up the moral of the story at the end. The real stars of that show were the rotating assortment of has-beens and B-listers who were actually doing things in the stories.

And yet… he always seemed like a big star, didn’t he? He just had that air about him, a larger-than-life quality that came from his apparently effortless elegance, his good looks, and a masculinity that was unapologetic but never cruel or bullying, as traditionally macho types can so often become. You can seen what I’m talking about in that photo up at the top, which comes from one of the many ads he did for Chrysler in the ’70s. (If you’re of a certain age, you will, of course, instantly recognize the term “Corinthian leather,” even though there’s really no such thing; sorry, kids, it was all just an exercise in marketing.) Montalban exuded the old-fashioned, magnetic charisma of the Golden Age of Hollywood: like Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, he appealed equally to women and men, and probably for the same reasons. He radiated strength and mystery, but wasn’t threatening to we lesser mortals. He was quite simply, employing a word that I can’t imagine a man of Montalban’s generation comfortably using, cool.

I suspect he would’ve been equally cool if he’d been mute, but his accent probably had a lot to do with his appeal as well. It was simultaneously exotic and familiar, and somehow unique to him. Montalban was from Mexico, but he didn’t sound Mexican, or at least he didn’t sound like what we whitebread Ameircans think of as “Mexican,” i.e., the East-LA, Cheech-Marin cholo stereotype. He sounded like… Ricardo Montalban. Which is appropriate, because he spent much of his career fighting against stereotyping of Mexicans and other Latinos, trying to break down the barriers he perceived in the movie industry and American society. Interesting, then, that his second best-known role (after Mr. Rourke) wasn’t Latino at all, but a Northern Indian Sikh named Khan Noonien Singh.*

I wouldn’t be much of a Trekkie if I didn’t mention Khan in this context, would I? He was possibly the best villain in the entire franchise, at least in terms of memorability, and certainly the best in the feature-film series. (Of course, it helps that the feature he appeared in, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, was also the best-written, most literate, and most exciting of the bunch; sorry, First Contact fans, but I find Kirk’s struggle for middle-aged purpose and meaning far more interesting and moving than Picard’s unresolved issues over being abducted by the Borg… which, of course, had already been resolved in the Next Gen TV series. But that’s another discussion.)

For my readers who aren’t up on their Trek lore, I should perhaps note that Khan was first introduced in an episode of the original series called “Space Seed.” He and his followers were genetically engineered “supermen,” stronger and more intelligent than natural humans, who attempted to take over Earth (in the original series’ increasingly anachronistic timeline) in the mid-1990s, sparking a conflict known as the Eugenics War. Rather than accept defeat at the end of that war, the supermen secretly stole a spaceship and set off for the stars… where, a few centuries down the line, they were discovered and awakened from suspended animation by the crew of the good ship Enterprise. Much hilarity ensues as Khan attempts to pick up where he left off.

Khan was actually an unlikely choice of villains to return in a big-screen sequel. “Space Seed” is one of the better remembered and more beloved episodes of Star Trek, but it ended on a positive note, with Khan and his followers being granted the opportunity to settle an uninhabited planet and make of it whatever they wished. It’s a prime example of the original series’ eternally optimistic outlook that everything will turn out for the best if we only have the imagination to find a solution other than the obvious one (i.e., conflict, hatred, and death). Because of this, there are those who argue that The Wrath of Khan does a disservice to its source material by revealing the happy ending to have been false. (Briefly, we learn in TWOK that Khan’s new world turned out to be a hell planet, and the noble prince we last saw at the end of “Seed” has evolved into a long-haired, wild-eyed maniac out for revenge over the death of his wife and the horrific struggles his people have been forced to endure. Naturally, he blames James T. Kirk personally and, when he gets the chance to escape, he immediately goes on the hunt for the Enterprise.) I can see the point of this argument, although I would counter that the evolution of Khan is perfectly in keeping with the overall theme of the film, i.e., coming to terms with advancing age and the sad reality that things don’t always go the way the way we imagine they will when we’re young. If we view “Space Seed” as an example of youthful idealism, then TWOK is grown-up pragmatism.

But as usual, I digress. Whatever your personal reading of either “Space Seed” or TWOK, there’s no denying that Montalban was magnificent as Khan, especially in the movie, where he chews as much scenery as Shatner but somehow never quite crosses the line from “melodramatic” into “over the top.” No less a personage than Pauline Kael said that TWOK “was the only validation he has ever had of his power to command the big screen.” Even now after many years and who knows how many viewings, there are two of his line readings that still raise the fine hairs on the back of my neck: the “buried alive, buried alive” taunt that prompts Shatner’s infamous cry of frustration (“Khhhhaaaaaaannnnn!!!!”) and his final words, proudly and appropriately cribbed from Moby Dick, as he watches the crippled Enteprise attempting to escape the building Genesis effect at a pathetic sublight crawl.

Oh, and incidentally, that really is Montalban’s 62-year-old chest on display in the movie, with no prosthetics or make-up effects as the rumors used to claim. He was buffer at retirement age than I am at 39, or even when I was 29. As I said, the man was cool. And the world is a much less cool place without him in it…

POSTSCRIPT: For another take on just how cool Ricardo Montalban was, check out Mark Evanier’s personal remembrance of the man…

* The uber-geeky Trek wiki site Memory Alpha notes that, as portrayed, “Khan would be a Sikh only in the ethnic sense since one requirement of males following the Sikh religion is to neither cut their hair nor shave their beards as an outward display of their faith. Khan, of course, has never been portrayed as anything other than clean-shaven. Further, other than in Marla McGiver’s interpretive artwork, Khan has never been seen wearing a turban, which is another requirement of the Sikh faith. And while it is possible to be Sahajdhari (a “slow adopter”), and exempt from the requirement of uncut hair and beard, this classification would not apply to Khan as Sahajdhari are never given the surname ‘Singh.'” But hey, what did the average TV viewer of the 1960s know of Sikhism, anyhow?