Henry Darrow, ‘High Chaparral’ actor who fought to expand Latino roles, dies

Emmy Award-winning actor Henry Darrow, better known as Manolito Montoya in the Western hit The High Chaparral and as the first Latino to play the dashing Zorro on television, has died at his home in North Carolina. North at the age of 87.

His former publicist Michael B. Druxman announced Darrows’ death on March 14 on Facebook, claiming the actor had died of natural causes. Rest in peace my friend, wrote Druxman, you will be missed.

There have been several tributes to Darrow on social media, including one by Robert Beltran, who worked with the veteran actor when Darrow starred in 1995 and 1996 as his father in Star Trek: Voyager. How delighted I was to act with him. He was a gentleman and an artist of the highest rank. His intellectual curiosity, his generous spirit, his joy were his great attributes. All young actors should study Henry (like me) and learn.

The Screen Actors Guild also celebrated Darrow: We pay tribute to the career and achievements of Henry Darrow, Puerto Rican pride and SAG board member from 1970 to 1973.

As well as being an actor, Darrow was an activist who worked to expand the roles offered to Latinos on screen. In 1972, Darrow, Ricardo Montalban, Carmen Zapata and Edith Diaz founded the Ethnic Minorities Committee of the Screen Actors Guild. Darrow was also vice president of Nostros, the organization Montalban founded to help Latino actors play non-stereotypical roles. And in 2012, he received the Ricardo Montalban Lifetime Achievement Award at the ALMA Awards.

His character Manolito was definitely a non-stereotypical Latino, Luis Reyes, co-author of Hispanics in Hollywood told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.

We felt proud, he noted. His character was so strong. His character of Manolito, especially in the pilot, comes across as your typical Latin stereotypical bandito at first, but during the pilot [you discover] this guy is not a bandito but the son of a wealthy land baron who is basically trying to find his own identity in his own way.

Darrow also found himself a teenage dream with the magazine set 16 and Tiger Beat. I appealed to the more mature 12 to 14 year olds, Darrow joked in a 2012 interview with The Times.

His appeal was also international. Darrow recalled an advertising tour of Sweden while the series was unfolding. I got a guitarist together and worked on a 25-minute number, he said. I learned a few sentences of Swedish. I had about 17,200 people on closing night. I thought it was amazing.

Darrow was born Enrique Tomas Delgado Jimenez (he changed his name in the 1960s to get more diverse roles) in New York City, the son of Puerto Rican immigrants. He explored his cultural roots when he and his family returned to Puerto Rico in 1946.

He studied political science and theater at the University of Puerto Rico and worked part time as an English language interpreter. After receiving a scholarship to a theater school, he moved to Los Angeles and trained at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he met his first wife, Lucy. They had two children, Denise and Tom.

The marriage ended in 1979 and three years later he married Lauren Levian.

After starring in various television series after High Chaparral Night Gallery, Mission: Impossible and Kojak among them, he played Lieutenant Manuel Manny Quinlan from 1974 to 1975 on the ABC crime series David Janssen Harry O but was killed after only one season when the series has been retooled.

He portrayed the heroic Zorro on the 1981 CBS animated The New Adventures of Zorro and in the 1983 CBS comedy Zorro and Son. He also portrayed Zorros’ father from 1990 to 1993 on Zorro family channels.

Darrow joined the cast of NBC daytime drama Santa Barbara in 1989 and won an Emmy the following year for his turn as Rafael Castillo, the father of series idol Cruz Castillo (A Martinez).

Martinez, who also won an Emmy that year, had long idolized Darrow because of his work as Manolito.

His energy and insight helped open up my work in ways that hadn’t been imagined before, Martinez said in an interview with The Times in 2012. He not only showed up every morning with the script mastered, but also often with tasty ideas for improvement.

Darrow wrote an autobiography, Henry Darrow: Lightning in a Bottle, with Jan Pippins in 2012. He made his last film appearance that year in an independent film called Soda Springs.

King is a former Times writer.