S20E09: Fantasy Island's Herve Villechaize
Trashy Divorces
Hemlock Creatives
4.5 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2023
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Content note: Discussion of suicide.
For a vanishingly brief few years in the late 80s and early 90s, America fell in love with a French actor most known for his small stature and high excitement at new arrivals. When Herve Villechaize opened Aaron Spelling's Fantasy Island with the exclamation, "The plane! The plane!" the public knew they were about to treated to another charming adventure featuring stars old and new. Unfortunately for Herve, his ego and excesses - he claimed to have slept with 35 women while filming a Bond movie in the 70s, during his first marriage - would get in the way of his continuing stardom, and increasing medical complications would rob his life of joy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody, and welcome to trashy divorces, everybody's favorite good podcast about bad relationships. |
| 0:07.6 | My name's Alicia and my trashy partner in crime, Stacey. |
| 0:11.1 | Hello. |
| 0:11.7 | Holy Cats, this week you're taking us back again to the magical time of Aaron Spelling's dominance on American television. |
| 0:19.1 | That is correct. |
| 0:20.4 | Today we're going to talk about kind of a tragic figure, unfortunately, the actor |
| 0:24.9 | Irvay Villages, who played the character Tattoo alongside Ricardo Montalban on TV's Fantasy |
| 0:31.6 | Island. |
| 0:32.4 | If you are of a certain age, you know it well. |
| 0:35.0 | Oh, the plane, the plane. |
| 0:36.6 | Absolutely. |
| 0:37.3 | On the one hand, it's the improbable |
| 0:39.3 | success story of a person whose uniquely short stature made him stand out as an actor, but |
| 0:45.3 | also made him something of a punchline. And on the other hand, it's a very sad story about a person |
| 0:50.7 | who's lofty but ultimately foiled ambitions, outrageous appetites, and increasingly |
| 0:56.3 | medically fraught life led to a tragic end. And for those sensitive to such topics, |
| 1:02.0 | Airvei Villages did die by suicide, and we'll let you know when we're getting to that section of the |
| 1:07.3 | story. Has anyone ever, though, been more excited about seeing an airplane than |
| 1:12.1 | tattoo? Definitely an aviation enthusiast. Hey, Alicia, if we're going to get to Fantasy Island, |
| 1:18.9 | what do we have to do? Let's go, go, go. Stacey, I know very, very little about Ervé personally, so I'm kind of excited about this story. |
| 1:38.9 | I also knew very, very little about him. However, most of us who have fond memories, although mine are a bit fleeting, |
| 1:45.6 | I definitely remember the plane, the plane. Oh, it was Can't Miss television. It was in, yes, many, |
... |
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