Starring Fidel Castro

Cafe Society
1

Now that the Cuban leader has passed on, I just wanted to take note of the many portrayals of Castro or a suspiciously Castro-like character. The Latin-American Beaded revolutionary became kind of a stock character in 1960s American TV shows and films, often played by unlikely actors

Peter Falk as “Ramos Clemente” in “The Mirror”, a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone You get the feeling they kinda wanted something like this to happen to the real Castro

John Vernon (Dean Wormer from Animal House!) as Cuban revolutionary “Rico Parra” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969)

Martin Landau on the pilot episode of “Mission Impossible” impersonates bearded uniformed “General Rio Dominguez” of “Santa Costa”.

Leonard Nimoy, as “Paris”, the disguise expert (who takes over that role after Martin Landau’s departure) in “The Bode”, his debut episode in 1969, disguises himself as “El Leader/ El Lider”, a suspiciously Castro-like bearded revolutionary.
Castro himself has been depicted as a character a number of times (52 entries on the imdb), played by such folks as **Jack Palance, Michael Sorich ** (three separate times), Christopher Walken, Will Ferrell (!! on Saturday Night Live), Joe Montegna, and, in Watchmen by John Kobylka

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0028277/?ref_=fn_ch_ch_1

According to the internet movie data base, Castro himself appeared as an extra in a couple of 1946 films:

2

Woody Allen in Bananas deserves a mention, although that was 1971.

3

I just remembered I had a History prof who said the 1960s didn’t end until 1974 and Nixon’s resignation, so maybe Bananas really does count.