Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino was born in Mexico City on 25th November 1920. He's best known in the Apes universe for playing Señor Armando, the kindly circus owner who befriends Zira and Cornelius in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes and Caesar's foster-father in Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes.
"Lousy human bastards!"
Ricardo Montalbán is also, of course, well-known for playing Khan Noonien Singh in the 1967 Star Trek episode Space Seed,
reprising the role in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
Montalbán's seven-decade acting career began in 1941 when he appeared in the New York Soundies after his move to the USA as a teenager.
Following his relocation to Hollywood in the forties he resisted the studios' attempts to rename him "Ricky Martin".
Following several bit-parts in the forties he made his starring debut as Pablo Rodriguez in Anthony Mann's 1949 film noir Border Incident.
Among his many film appearances are Neptune's Daughter (1949), Sayonara (1957), Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962),
Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Sweet Charity (1969), The Mark Of Zorro (1974), Cannonball Run 2 (1984), The Naked Gun (1988)
and Spy Kids 2 (2002).
He also appeared in dozens of TV programmes including Wagon Train (1957), Bonanza (1960), The Virginian (1962),
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964 and 1966), The Wild Wild West (1966), Mission: Impossible (1967), Hawaii 5-0 (1972),
Dynasty (1986) and, of course, Fantasy Island (1978 - 1984).
He won an Emmy Award for his role in the miniseries How the West Was Won (1978).
Montalbán with Hervé Villechaize in Fantasy Island
Montalbán was born with an arteriovenous malformation in his spine, which was aggravated by a fall from a horse whilst filming in 1951.
This resulted in Montalbán suffering chronic back pain for the rest of his life, and following surgery in 1993, he was confined to a wheelchair.
In 1993 he was awarded the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1998, he was made a KSG (Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great) by Pope John Paul II.
Ricardo Montalbán died of congestive heart failure on 14th January 2009, aged 88.
Ricardo Montalbán
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