44 Fun Facts About Fantasy Island

Which Addams Family actress, once married to Aaron Spelling, guest-starred in four episodes of Fantasy Island?

Carolyn Jones, TV's original Morticia, kept working on the daytime soap Capitol even as she was dying of cancer.

In Fantasy Island's final season, how did butler Lawrence ring the tower bell?

By pressing a button: the sedate butler rang the bell from below instead of making the frantic run up the tower that opened earlier episodes.

On Fantasy Island, what was the name of Mr. Roarke's assistant played by Hervé Villechaize?

Tattoo did not return for the 1998 revival, which gave Mr. Roarke a whole team of new assistants instead.

On Fantasy Island, what does Mr. Roarke's assistant shout from the bell tower at the start of each episode?

'De plane! De plane!' greeted a real seaplane, which sold in 2016 at a collector car auction in Branson, Missouri.

On Fantasy Island, what does Mr. Roarke tell his staff just before each new group of guests arrives?

'Smiles, everyone! Smiles!' sets a cheerful welcome, even though Mr. Roarke often knows a guest's fantasy will not turn out as they expect.

On the original Fantasy Island, what color suit is Mr. Roarke known for wearing?

White was Mr. Roarke's signature, so the 1998 revival had its new Roarke choose a black suit and order all the white ones burned.

Ricardo Montalbán played a grandfather in which Robert Rodriguez film series?

Spy Kids director Robert Rodriguez wanted Montalbán specifically for the grandfather role and persuaded him to take it.

Which Desperate Housewives star reunited with James Denton to play a married couple on Fantasy Island in 2023?

Teri Hatcher and Denton play empty nesters unsure whether to stay married. The island wipes their memory of the marriage, and they fall for each other and marry all over again.

Which Sesame Street character did Fantasy Island's Hervé Villechaize help perform in the 1970s?

Oscar the Grouch: when early scenes needed the Grouch to go somewhere, his trash can sprouted legs and walked, and the legs were Villechaize's.

Which standard did future Fantasy Island star Ricardo Montalbán sing with Esther Williams in 1949's Neptune's Daughter?

Baby, It's Cold Outside: Frank Loesser wrote the duet to sing with his wife at parties, and she was upset when he sold their party piece to MGM for the film.

Josie Bissett, Laura Leighton and Daphne Zuniga reunited on Fantasy Island in 2021 after starring together in which 1990s drama?

Melrose Place: they play old friends whose shared 50th-birthday trip turns sour. When they can't settle it, the island drops them into a funeral for one of the three.

Who played the Devil opposite Mr. Roarke in the Fantasy Island episode 'The Devil and Mr. Roarke'?

Roddy McDowall played the Devil twice, first coming for a woman who had sold her soul to save her dying husband.

Years after Fantasy Island ended, what did Ricardo Montalbán reveal he had imagined Mr. Roarke to be?

A fallen angel, he said, punished for the sin of pride and sentenced to the island as his purgatory.

Which actress joined Fantasy Island from 1981 to 1982 as Mr. Roarke's assistant Julie?

Wendy Schaal played Julie in season five, when the Devil returned in 'The Devil and Mr. Roarke' scheming for Mr. Roarke's own soul.

Why did Hervé Villechaize's time on Fantasy Island end in 1983?

A salary dispute ended his run, and afterward his career dried up apart from the odd Dunkin' Donuts commercial.

In Fantasy Island's final season, who played Lawrence, the butler who replaced Villechaize's character?

Christopher Hewett moved on the following year to his best-known role, the title butler of the sitcom Mr. Belvedere.

What is the real building whose bell tower appears at the start of each Fantasy Island episode?

The Queen Anne Cottage stands not on a tropical island but in a public arboretum in Arcadia, California, where the show also filmed outdoor scenes.

Fantasy Island's opening titles show a waterfall filmed on which Hawaiian island?

Kauai supplied Wailua Falls for the opening titles, but nearly everything else on the island was really filmed in Southern California.

Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montalbán played circus owner Armando in two sequels to which film?

Planet of the Apes: in Escape and Conquest, Armando hides the talking chimps' newborn son in his circus and raises him as Caesar, who grows up to lead the ape revolt.

Which future film star made her acting debut in a 1978 episode of Fantasy Island?

Michelle Pfeiffer: a supermarket checkout clerk at 19, she entered a beauty pageant as her ticket out of retail. It landed her an agent, and her first part followed the same year.

Fantasy Island's Ricardo Montalbán later voiced billionaire villain Señor Senior Sr. on which Disney Channel cartoon?

Kim Possible: Senior is a retired billionaire who takes up villainy purely as a hobby, and only because Kim's sidekick Ron suggests it.

Which legendary actor did ABC want for Mr. Roarke before Spelling rejected him?

Spelling also vetoed the network's idea of a sexy female sidekick for Roarke.

Which other Aaron Spelling series aired directly before Fantasy Island each week?

Both shows relied on rotating celebrity guest stars, and characters occasionally crossed between them.

How did children arrive at the island in two Season 2 episodes, instead of by plane?

Typical episodes featured adult guests, so the balloon arrivals were a rare novelty.

In the 2021 Fantasy Island episode 'His and Hers', a married couple's fantasy makes them do what?

Swap bodies: the couple are played by real-life spouses Dave and Odette Annable, and during the fantasy they learn that she is pregnant.

In the 2021 Fantasy Island series, Roarke's assistant Ruby first arrived as a guest facing what?

A terminal illness: Ruby arrived as an old woman with little time left, and the island made her young and healthy. She stayed to keep that life while her husband went home alone.

In 1964, Hervé Villechaize left France for which American city, hoping to make it as an artist?

New York is where the painter turned to acting, first on stage and then in films.

What was the profession of Hervé Villechaize's father, who spent years seeking treatments for his son's dwarfism?

A surgeon, his father took him from hospital to hospital for treatments, but none of them made a lasting difference to his height.

In which James Bond film did Villechaize play the henchman Nick Nack?

He was Christopher Lee's sidekick Scaramanga's servant, three years before Fantasy Island.

After Fantasy Island ended, Ricardo Montalbán played Charlton Heston's business rival Zach Powers on which Dynasty spin-off?

The Colbys: its second season closed with a heroine stranded in the desert walking aboard an alien spaceship, and that cliffhanger proved to be the show's last.

Who played Villechaize in the 2018 HBO film My Dinner with Hervé?

Peter Dinklage played him in a film built on Sacha Gervasi's own long interview with Villechaize, recorded shortly before the actor died in 1993.

Where was Ricardo Montalbán, TV's Mr. Roarke, born?

Mexico City was his birthplace, and after years of stereotyped roles he helped found Nosotros to push Hollywood toward fairer portrayals of Latinos.

Which villain did Montalbán play in a 1967 Star Trek episode and again in a 1982 film?

Khan Noonien Singh bared a chest so muscular that fans suspected a prosthetic, but director Nicholas Meyer insists it was all Montalbán.

Ricardo Montalbán famously praised the 'Corinthian leather' of which car in TV commercials?

The Chrysler Cordoba's 'Corinthian leather' was only a marketing term, not a special kind of leather at all.

For which 1978 miniseries did Montalbán win an Emmy Award?

He won it the same year Fantasy Island became a weekly series.

Which part of Ricardo Montalbán's body was injured when a horse threw him on a 1951 Clark Gable western?

His spine never healed from the fall, and in his later years Montalbán used a wheelchair.

Who played Mr. Roarke in the 1998 ABC revival?

Barry Sonnenfeld's darker, wittier version was filmed in Hawaii and lasted 13 episodes.

Ricardo Montalbán played the villain in which 1988 comedy?

The Naked Gun had his villain hypnotize baseball star Reggie Jackson into trying to kill the visiting British monarch.

Who played Mr. Roarke in the 2020 Blumhouse horror film?

Jeff Wadlow's film was a horror reimagining and prequel, released on Valentine's Day 2020.

Which horror studio produced the 2020 Fantasy Island film?

Blumhouse made it for about $7 million, and though critics panned it, the film grossed about $49 million worldwide.

Where was most of the 2020 Fantasy Island horror film shot?

Fiji stood in for the island, where Lucy Hale's Melanie seeks revenge on Sloane, the school bully who tormented her.

In the 2021 Fox series, Roselyn Sánchez plays which character?

Elena is a grandniece of the original Mr. Roarke; the show was filmed in Puerto Rico and ran two seasons before its May 2023 cancellation.

Which network premiered the 2021 Fantasy Island sequel series on August 10, 2021?

Fox put every season of the 1977 original and the 1998 remake on its free streamer Tubi from May 1, 2021, months before the premiere.

Who played Ricardo Montalbán in the 2018 HBO film My Dinner with Hervé?

Andy García plays a co-star pushed too far: in the film, Villechaize's wild behavior leads Montalbán to get the younger actor's lines cut from the scripts.