Ricardo Montalban and Audrey Totter Dine At Romanoff’s – 1951

INSIDE HOLLYWOOD by Nat Dallinger (week ending July 13 1951)
Audrey Totter is an attentive listener as Ricardo Montalban related a story during a dinner at Romanoff’s, in Beverly Hills. A radio actress before embarking on a screen career, Audrey once worked as a door-to-door saleslady for a wax concern. After a highly successful career in radio, she received offers from the New York stage and Hollywood. Selecting the latter, this blue-eyed blonde has won top starring roles for herself in numerous motion pictures. Romantically she is expected to become the bride of film producer Armand Deutsch. photo: Nat Dallinger for King Features Syndicate

Nat Dallinger would capture Hollywood celebrities in candid moments for his syndicated photo column Inside Hollywood.

Audrey Totter (1917-2013) never became a Hollywood star of the first magnitude but appeared steadily in films throughout the 1940s and early 50s. Her most prominent films included The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946); Lady in The Lake (1946); The Unsuspected (1947) and The Set-Up (1949). Audrey transitioned to television work after her film career slowed appearing in dozens of shows.

Regarding Nat Dallinger’s prognostication of Audrey’s nuptials to producer Deutsch – it never happened. Audrey married Dr. Leo Fred on September 20, 1952. They had one daughter and remained together until his death on March 12, 1995.

Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009) also was a star on a similar trajectory with a lot of good film roles in the 1940s and 1950s. But his eternal fame comes from television and two roles. The first, playing the cryogenic warrior Khan on a 1967 episode of the television show Star Trek. It’s a role he reprised in 1982’s Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan.

Montalban is also well remembered as Mr Roarke, the host at Fantasy Island, the classic 1970s TV show.

For people who remember the 1970s, Montalban is forever linked with a series of commercials for the Chrysler Cordoba with it’s “rich Corinthian leather.”