Ricardo Montalban died today. I have mentioned that it is not uncommon for those of us in the Hollywood area to encounter celebrities, rather frequently. There was a time when the current Gelson's on Santa Monica was Mayfair that I saw a bevy of characters, including George Maharis (Route 66), Linda Hunt (Year of Living Dangerously), James Shigeta (Flower Drum Song) and Michael Sarazin (The Reincarnation of Peter Proud), among them. A friend of mine saw the now late Warren Zevon.
At Church it was not unusual for me to be praying among Danny Thomas, Vincent Price and his wife Coral Browne, Christopher Hewitt, Audrey Meadows, Jane Wyatt, Peter Boyle, Edward Hermann and Ricardo Montalban.
The unwritten rule among us ordinary Los Angeleans that you don't bother actors and actreses and other performers when they are going about their business. They have a right not to be accosted in their private moments. There can be nothing more private about being in your Church for Mass.
So, I would never speak with him, except perhaps to nod hello on occasion as I would to any other parishioner. I had been a lector for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. One day I was going down the stairs and into the parking lot to leave after the service when Mr. Montalban, dressed in his usual suave, came up to me of a sudden, and put his hand on my shoulder. He said, "You read wonderfully. . .such good diction" in his well known sensual voice and accent.
That compliment from that person-it was heady stuff for a kid from the Bronx. (My mother had been enamored of him, even as she mispronounced his last name as Montal-blan). And it was kind of him to say it.
I will remember his many movie roles, his late career self-reinvention as Khan, as Mr. Rourke, as commercial pitchman, but mostly, I will remember a moment's encounter with a television icon.
