Ricardo Montalbán Movies


Jump To Ricardo Montalbán Links: 1. Box Office 2. Reviews 3. Trailers 4. UMR Table

Ricardo Montalbán was born Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino in Mexico City in 1920.  He was a Mexican actor whose career spanned seven decades.   His two most famous performances were playing Mr. Roarke on the television series Fantasy Island  from 1977 to 1984, and Khan Noonien Singh in both the original Star Trek series (1967) and the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).

His IMDb page shows 172 acting credits from 1942-2009. This page will rank 33 Ricardo Montalbán movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings. This page goes from a request by Bandaras fan and a “seconded” by Flora.

Ricardo Montalbán Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Ricardo Montalbán Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • If movie title is a blue, then there is a Ricardo Montalbán movie trailer attached to the page link
  • Sort Ricardo Montalbán movies by co-stars or in some cases directors
  • Sort Ricardo Montalbán movies by adjusted box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Ricardo Montalbán movies by box office rank in the year of release
  • Sort Ricardo Montalbán movies by how the movie was received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Ricardo Montalbán movie received.
  • Sort Ricardo Montalbán movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the search and sort buttons to make this table very interactive.

Jump To Ricardo Montalbán Links: 1. Box Office 2. Reviews 3. Trailers 4. UMR Table

 

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44 thoughts on “Ricardo Montalbán Movies”

  1. Hey bob roy…..wow….that is a bold opinion….not thinking many have ranked Ricardo behind Gene Kelly in the dancing rankings….I have not seen any of Ricardo’s musicals…so I can not actualy compared…..but when it comes to male dancers of the big screen…Kelly and Astaire have the top two spots locked up. Good stuff.

    Reply

    1. HI BRUCE

      I was just pulling Steve’s leg about Kelly/Ricardo as Kelly is Steve’s idol and I am sorry if I seriously misled you.

      I agree with you about the Kelly/Astaire lock-up.

      Well after Guys and Dolls a Kelly/Astaire/Brando lock-up. [There I go again – I just don’t know when to stop leg pulling !!]

      “I see you’ve been to the Irishman!”

      Fred Astaire to a dance pupil of his who had previously taken lessons with Gene. Fred thought that the pupil’s techniques were not free-flowing enough and he attributed that to Kelly’s perceived more rigid style.

      Do you know if Gene and Fred ever met and if so did they get on well?

      Reply

      1. Bob: Gene and Fred did indeed know each other and danced together in Ziegfeld Follies and That’s Entertainment! II. In That’s Entertainment!, Gene Kelly introduced the segment on Astaire and called him his favourite dance partner. They were friends and when Kelly broke his ankle (leg?) and could not be in Easter Parade, he called up Astaire and convinced him to come out of retirement to take Kelly’s place.

        Reply

        1. Hey Flora….you are right. Kelly and Astaire had their famous dance scene in Ziegfeld Follies. I gather from what I read….they were always working near each other. The Debbie Reynolds story about Singin’ In The Rain is an example. After Gene Kelly had really gotten on Reynolds for some errors…..it was Fred Astaire who swept in and coached Reynolds. And the rest is movie history. Good feedback…as always.

          Reply

      2. Hey Bob Roy….yep that one flew right over my head. I was like …..”The big two…Astaire and Khannnnnnnnnn. But I took the bait…lol.

        Reply

    1. Glad you like this page Banderas Fan……Antonio is on the request list….will see how quickly I can get to him…..thanks for the suggestion.

      Reply

  3. HI Bruce

    Thanks for your response.

    I wasn’t complaining though as it was nice to see stats for so many Ricardo’s movies assembled on the one page under his name and that brought home to me the fact that he made a number of films with Esther Williams/Cyd Charisse/Lana Turner/Glenn Ford which I hadn’t picked up when I read THEIR pages

    Neither had I realised first time round that John Surges directed one of my fave B thrillers, Mystery Street and of course I hever tire of having the opportunity to look again at that wonderful gross for Sayonara!

    Reply

  4. Great!

    You won’t have to wear earplugs for that one. Probably when I watched Desert Warrior under its Italian title I was unwittingly honing up my preference for foreign art house films so that the appetite was already in place when I discovered what artistic treasures those movies are!

    In it Ricardo was solid 50s hero who didn’t need special effects and guys screaming at the top of their voices at each other to drown out the other kinds of din.

    Let me know what you think of Ricardo in his prime – the real deal – ie a 6ft hero unlike the pocket-hero Sly .

    By the way was it Ric who played Khan in The Wrath of?

    Reply

    1. Sissy Bob, yes it was macho man Ricardo as Khan in Wrath of, and he played Khan in the classic Star Trek episode Space Seed which aired in 1966 I believe.

      Khan Noonien Singh as you might have guessed is supposed to be Indian, and not the native American types Ric sometimes plays. Still he looks the part much more than English actor Benedict Cumberbatch did when he played Khan in a recent Star Trek movie. Though I did like him as the villain in that film.

      Btw check out the trailer for Fiesta linked by Bruce above and watch Ricardo dance rings around Cyd Charisse. It’s an eye-opener. Someone should send Bill Shatner a link to the video. 😉

      Reply

      1. HI MR LENSFLARE

        Thanks for the additional information about Ricardo and Khan and the link.

        I suppose few more modern moviegoers would be totally unfamiliar with the Ricardo of Cyd’s time and if they knew of him at all would think only of TV’s Fantasy Island if his name was mentioned.

        What’s with this new Lensflare alias? Are we being conditioned for the creation of some new superhero such as The Phantom or The Arrow but called The Flare? .

        Anyway speak to you tomorrow about my wife’s namesake, Jessica. Being a feminist Mrs Roy refuses to be called W o Bob and insists I introduce myself as Mr Jessica Roy. That’s what we mushy wimps tend to do of course! .

        Reply

        1. HI STEVE

          I forgot to mention during our exchanges about art house movies v the action and “exciting” genres that in 1956 Larry Olivier’s Richard 3 and The Creature Walks among Us [aka Das Ungeheur ist uns unter- sounds very art housey doesn’t it?] were released in GB around the same time.

          Britain’s lead film critic Margaret Hinksman reviewed both of them in the same issue of Photoplay film magazine and she headlined her double review-

          WHEN CULTURE VERSUS THE CREATURE CULTURE WINS.

          Reply

          1. STEVE

            My last post was meant for you – apologies for dropping The Flare from the marquee!

        2. Good point…Jessica Roy. Sounds like a fair plan. I agree with you that few are aware that Ricardo and Cyd made a successful film dance team….like many Marvel Superheros….they have vanished into the air.

          Reply

          1. HI BRUCE

            I wouldn’t be so sure about the superhero MOVIES ever vanishing into thin air. Steve probably has[inHoward Hughes fashion] copies of them all locked up in a vault so that he can watch them every night!

            Good stuff of Steve’s though, as you say, about Ricardo and Cyd dancing.

            My own view is in fact that Ricardo was a better dancer than Gene Kelly!

            Can John McClane dance by the way?

  5. HELLO BRUCE – IS THERE ANYONE THERE? !
    Ricardo was never one of even my boyhood B list idols but my 1950s gang liked some of his movies all the same. The ones that I can remember seeing on the list above are Mystery Street, Sombrero, Latin Lovers [with Lana] and Mark of the Renegade.

    For me of course it only enhanced Ricardo’s status when he later supported 5 of my personal A list idols , Glenn Ford (Love is a Ball aka All this and Money Too] Brando [Sayonara] Widmark & Stewart [Cheyenne Autumn] and Wayne [The Train Robbers].

    All of the films in the preceeding paragraph are also covered in your table above. However the following which I can also well remember attending are not – The Saracen Blade (1954) A Life in the Balance (1955) and Desert Warrior (1957).

    In Desert Warrior [an Italian-Spanish film aka Gli Amanti del Deserto] Ricardo played an action hero that Steve would probably have put top of his list of muscle-bound idols and even John McClane might have envied!

    For example in one scene about a dozen baddies swarmed Ricardo and buried him under their own heap only for him to somehow slip out from under them and then best each of them in quick succession using acrobatic skills and well-honed fighting techniques – all with the minimum of fuss and noise Steve!

    Most coming to my mind though is A Life in the Balance [given a respectable 62% rating by IMDB] co-starring Lee Marvin and Anne “Robinson” Bancroft [both of course minor performers in 1955] because I saw that one in the Royal Hippodrome Belfast.

    The latter was an old variety playhouse that had never been renovated and so had 3 balcony layers the top one of which was so high up that it was nicknamed “The Gods”. As it was time-consuming and physically taxing to get to the seats there were the cheapest in the house and therefore attractive to little Bob who had sparse money but young legs!

    I thank you Bruce for reminding me of my days long ago when I watched the films of this likeable “Latin lover” of the 1940s and 50s, so a hearty Lensman “Vote Up” greeting from me to your new Ricardo page.

    Reply

    1. Bob, after reading your post Desert Warrior has piqued my interest, a lot more than the mushy melodrama’s you and others here seem to enjoy. Thanks for the tip I’ll watch out for it.

      Reply

    2. Hey Bob….sadly many of Ricardo Montalban’s movies turned out to be very hard to find box office information on….I have been searching for A Life In The Balance for years….and still…noting to report. I noticed he had made numerous movies with your favorites. I like the breakdown of his early movies…Ricardo McClane….I can easily see it. Glad this brought back some good memories for you…..good feedback as always.

      Reply

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