First came news that Patrick McGoohan, star of The Prisoner, had died. Now comes the passing of the star of another seminal, but entirely different, TV fantasy set in a surreal, beautiful yet menacing resort locale. Ricardo Montalbán, who died at age 88, was known, among other roles, as Star Trek’s Khan and the pitchman for the rich Corinthian leather of the Chrysler Cordoba. But his immortal TV role was Mr. Roarke, the suave (an adjective that unavoidably attaches to Montalbán) proprietor of Fantasy Island.
One of Aaron Spelling’s hit escapes of the 1970s—a cousin to The Love Boat—Fantasy Island (1978-84) embodied the eternal TV concept of indulging viewers’ prurience and dreams of luxury while also offering salving moral lessons. The visitors to Roarke’s island, where any dream could come true, inevitably ended up deeper truths through their quests for glamor. And Montalbán (along with tiny Herve Villechaize as his sidekick Tattoo) was key to the show’s sense of exotic adventure. His tanned charm and signature “Welcome—to FAHN-tasy Island!”—making him a virtual human gateway from our world to a land of tropical moral allegory. Fantasy Island needed a star whose voice and manner embodied magic; the disarming Montalbán delivered, fantastically.
