Raul Roulien

Actor · Director · Producer · Writer

Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

October 8, 1905

Biography

Raul Salvador Intini Pepe Roulien (7 October 1904 – 8 September 2000), known professionally as Raul Roulien, was a Brazilian actor, singer, screenwriter and film director.[1] He is widely considered the first male Brazilian star in Hollywood. He worked briefly in Hollywood in the waning days of the American movies' embrace of the "Latin lover" (a title invented for the Italian actor Rudolph Valentino), a phenomenon that encouraged the Jewish-American actor Jacob Krantz to change his name to Ricardo Cortez. Raul began recording in 1928 and grew in reputation as a theater actor and composer as well, being the greatest Brazilian heartthrob of his time. That same year, he formed the theatrical company Abigail Maia-Raul Roulien, with then wife, actress Abigail Maia, authoring a genre called "frivolity theater", which were quick shows that took place between breaks in the cinema. In 1931, at the age of 29, with his talent and good looks, he went to the United States and was signed to 20th Century Fox, where he worked between 1931 and 1934. His career spanned a total of 18 films, including Delicious (1931) and Flying Down to Rio (1933), the latter starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their first dance together. In 1933 his second wife, Diva Tosca (née Tosca Izabel Querze), was hit and killed as a pedestrian on Sunset Boulevard by John Huston.[2] Description above from the Wikipedia article Raul Roulien.