The wires reported yesterday the death of Ricardo Montalban, at 88. Among other things, he was the brother-in-law of legendary Hollywood Catholic Loretta Young.

Those of us Of A Certain Age remember the strange and smooth stylings of Ricardo Montalban as he intoned on television, week after week, “Welcome to Fantasy Island!,” while the weird little dwarf Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize) offered his loyal support. (The diminutive Villechaize will forever be remembered for his own catch-phrase “Da plane, da plane!”)

Around the same time, the mid-1970s, Montalban became legendary for his commercials for Chrysler, where he extolled the virtues of seats that were made of “soft Corinthian leather” — the surprising but compelling kind of detail that, somehow, St. Paul never mentioned in his letters.

And, it turns out, there’s a reason for that:

Mr. Montalbán embodied stereotypes, fought them and transcended them in his years in show business. His entire reputation, both as smooth Latin seducer and parodist of a smooth Latin seducer, was capsulized in a television advertisement from the mid-1970s in which he served as pitchman for the Cordoba, a luxury car being introduced by Chrysler. He purred over the automobile’s assets, including the seats, upholstered, he said, in “soft, Corinthian leather,” a phrase that became a campy giggle-inducer, especially after it became known that there is no such thing as Corinthian leather, from Corinth or anywhere else: the description was just a marketing invention.

RIP, Ricardo.

You can relive the opening moments of “Fantasy Island” below — and what a lineup of guest stars!