Henry Darrow, pioneering Puerto Rican actor who played Manolito Montoya in The High Chaparral – obituary

Henry Darrow, who has died aged 87, was best known to British television audiences as Manolito Montoya, the dashing son of a wealthy Mexican nobleman, in the popular Western series The High Chaparral.

Shown here on BBC2 between 1967 and 1971, The High Chaparral was the creation of David Dotort, the man behind another hit television Western, Bonanza (ITV, 1960-1973).

Set in the 1870s, the show featured a family of settlers headed by Big John Cannon (Leif Erickson) struggling to establish a cattle ranch in Arizona before it became a state. As Manolito, Darrow became the first Puerto Rican star of an hour-long primetime television series, playing the brother of Victoria Montoya (Linda Cristal), Cannon’s second wife.

Darrow based Manolito on two Shakespearean characters he had played: Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, which added a comedic touch, and Iago from Othello, which added a little darkness to the character.

According to a website dedicated to The High Chaparral, Manolito stood tall alongside the Cannons, “formidable, discerning and loyal, yet restless, self-indulgent and ever searching … “Whether playing poker in a saloon, wooing a potential conquest, breaking a political prisoner out of jail, cradling a lost child in his arms or waxing philosophical beneath the stars, there is nothing simple about Manolito Montoya.”

Henry Darrow was born Enrique Tomás Delgado Jiménez Jr on September 15 1933 in Manhattan. His parents ran a restaurant popular with stars including Humphrey Bogart and Tallulah Bankhead, and he made his acting debut aged eight in a school play. When he was 13, his parents returned the family to their native Puerto Rico.

He studied political science and acting at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 1954 won a scholarship to the Pasadena Playhouse. In one of his early films he played a villain in Revenge of the Virgins (1959), while on stage he appeared in plays including The Alchemist (1963) and Dark of the Moon (1966).

Darrow landed the part of Manolito in The High Chaparral after being spotted by Dotort in The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit in Los Angeles, appearing under the name Henry Delgado.

“I said I’d like to speak in Spanish and that I would learn Indian sign language,” Darrow recalled. “I said ‘I’m ready to read for the part.’ And David Dortort replied: ‘You don’t have to. You’ve got it. You talked us into it.”

As the son of the Mexican cattle baron Don Sebastián Montoya (Frank Silvera), Darrow appeared in 97 episodes of the series, which portrayed a Latino family as the equals of white settlers. The show’s writers asked Darrow and his on-screen sister Linda Cristal to ad lib Spanish dialogue that would sound believable coming from siblings.

Although Darrow’s character was a smooth-talking ladies’ man with a killer smile, one fellow actor recognised “a power player with major grace – a dangerous man with a romantic heart standing down to no one.”

Darrow also played a San Diego police detective, Manny Quinlan, alongside David Janssen in the first series of the American private eye show Harry O in 1974. He appeared in many other popular soap operas, miniseries, sitcoms, and dramas of the time, among them Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, The Outer Limits, Kojak, Hawaii Five-O, The Waltons and Dallas.

His memoir, Henry Darrow: Lightning in the Bottle, was published in 2012. He was vice-president of Nosotros, an organisation founded by the actor Ricardo Montalban in 1970 to help Latinos get cast in roles other than outlaws or sidekicks.

Henry Darrow is survived by his second wife, Lauren Levian, whom he married in 1982, and by two children of his first marriage.

Henry Darrow, born September 15 1933, died March 14 2021