Scene from “A Matter of Honor,” season 5, episode 4 of Columbo (airdate: February 1, 1976).
Why does Ricardo Montalban (or Ricardo Gonzalez Pedro Montalbán y Merino, to give his Mexican name in full) remain not just in our memories but also in our hearts? Most people over a certain age remember Marlon Brando, and he’s still an actor that younger people admire in some way — but I don’t know that Brando warms the cockles of anyone’s heart, particularly. I’m not trying to have a go at Brando: he was just the first actor that popped into my head as being both larger than life and rather uncuddly at the same time. You might say that this very uncuddly, non-avuncular presence was what suited him so well to play the Mafia-boss godfather, in the famous movie that only a Martian hasn’t heard of. But the thing about Ricardo Montalban is that, broad as his range was, he too was suited to his most famous roles. (If you haven’t seen him as the murderer in the classic Columbo series, please do.) And he was suited to them — indeed, ideal — because underneath the steeliness and the don’t-mess-with-Texas manliness, he had a suavity and mildness, a calm and self-possessed humanity and decency, that always shone through.
When he plays Khan in “Space Seed” (see my blog post on that episode), he brings both qualities of smooth-talking ladies’ man and el jefe to the role, integrating them so that one is part of the other. Khan doesn’t drop his guard to woo and persuade Lieutenant Marla McGivers: to the contrary, it is her awareness that he is the full Khan and nothing but the Khan that makes her hair more readily tumble to her shoulders. Being the dominator, the man who sees himself as king wherever he goes, he wants her to feel the coldness of his power at the same time as she feels the warmth of his admiration. And Khan, of course, would use the word “admiration,” spoken by Montalban as if he relished every last syllable, rather than anything so crude and ordinary as “lust.” But it’s all there, the fantasy that McGivers has hardly let herself dare to dream, in the person of this one man. The situation would be ludicrous or at best unconvincing with an actor less magnetic, less true to the part in some fundamental way, than Ricardo Montalban.
Khan as the guest of honor aboard the starship Enterprise. Khan stood up first, but Kirk doesn’t take challenges to his authority sitting down!
And yet, Khan was at root a lesser man than the man that played him as a “superman.” Khan wanted the love of McGivers, not so that he could requite it but to make his possession of her, and her surrender to him, more complete. There were plenty of men willing to obey him and live by his rules. But how much more satisfying to inspire the adoration that was not just compelled by the powers that be but instead compelled itself to worship that power — and the man that embodied it. In the end, even a tyrant with vast powers is still just another mortal. But to be fearfully, fretfully, devotedly loved as well: that is to put him on a footing with the gods.
Ricardo Montalban was no Khan, in this sense: he genuinely loved, and wanted to give as he received. And this was true from a very young age. He met his future wife, Georgiana Young, when he was only eighteen and she fifteen. They married and had four children, and the marriage ended only with her death, 63 years later. Like any big star he would have had temptations, but he was a solidly married man and nothing could change that. Beyond his marriage, he was good to other people and his comments in an interview about the tragic Hervé Villechaize exemplify that goodness. He expressed compassion for Villechaize as a man that wasn’t able to live as he wanted — but this compassion was never slighting or patronizing. Montalban, as a man that lived his manhood to its full extent, garnering wealth, status, fame, and the fondness of audiences everywhere, was no exultant and contemptuous Khan. (Remember, Khan even managed to insult Captain Kirk, on the captain’s own ship, once the mask slipped.) Montalban was a natural gentleman, a kind of modern knight, and a gracious man who wore his gifts ungaudily and with gratitude. If he was rare in his lifetime, he would be even rarer now, in an era that seems not to value such virtues very much. Indeed, we dislike even the sound of “virtue.” But Montalban was a truly virtuous man. And that’s why I miss him.