Star Trek II's Khan, Ricardo Montalban, Had An Iconic Commercial Quote You Likely Forgot
By Isabella Wilson
While leather manufactured in the city of Corinth in Greece could, technically, be considered Corinthian leather, the interiors of Chrysler vehicles in the '70s and '80s incorporated nothing of the sort. Rather, PR agency Bozell came up with the phrase based on its marketability alone. Bozell is responsible for several other iconic ad slogans, including "the other white meat" in reference to pork and Sega's notorious rebuke of Nintendo, "Genesis does what Nintendon't."
During a 1987 "Late Night with David Letterman" interview, Ricardo Montalbán himself owned up to the fact that there's no such thing as Corinthian leather. "They found a leather that was very pliable, very soft, and very durable. And so ... Corinthian," he told Letterman, eliciting laughs from an audience aware of its meaninglessness.
It's perhaps a credit to Montalbán, then, that he could deliver nonsense so convincingly. Even consumers aware that Corinthian leather was nothing more than a sales tactic still held on to the phrase and reintroduced it in new contexts as a shorthand for haughtiness decades after the fact.
