Curtain Closings

I'm sad to hear that Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan have passed away.

When I was a kid my elders were great Montalban fans, and as I grew older and watched his performances with a more experienced and critical eye, I could see why. Urbane and attractive, dangerous but charming, he was one of the best latino actors without being a caricature.

Patrick McGoohan will always be the epitome of the grim, gritty Danger Man/Secret Agent, John Drake, more realistic but in some understated way more suave than most James Bonds have been. Considerably more introspective and intellectual, too. He is probably better remembered for The Prisoner, and he did brilliantly in his fairly brief role in Braveheart, as well as in other roles, but I'll always remember him fondly as the sympathetic but implacable secret agent.

I'm going to miss both actors, but at 88 and 80 respectively, they each had pretty good runs. And the final curtain always has to come down, sometime.