Luis Van Rooten

Luis d'Antin van Rooten (November 29, 1906 – June 17, 1973) was a Mexican-born American actor, author, artist, designer and architect. He was sometimes credited as Louis Van Rooten. Van Rooten was born in Mexico City, Mexico. His father worked as a translator and clerk at the American Embassy. Some sources say his father was killed during the Mexican Revolution. In 1914, when he was 8, Van Rooten emigrated to the United States with his Belgian grandmother. Because he had no papers, his grandmother claimed van Rooten was her son, which resulted in the elongation of his name to Luis Ricardo Carlos Fernand d’Antin y Zuloaga van Rooten. Van Rooten attended a boarding school in Pennsylvania and earned his BA in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1927. He enjoyed a successful career as an architect in Cleveland, Ohio before his love for acting led to a career as one of radio and television's most prolific character actors and narrators. Van Rooten's obituary in The New York Times noted that he worked on as many as 50 shows a month because of his ability to do dialects and criminals. Once, he was bumped off in 10 crime shows in a week. His facility with languages made van Rooten an in-demand military radio announcer during World War II. He conducted a variety of broadcasts in Italian, Spanish, and French. This led to film work, often in roles requiring an accent or skill with dialects. Van Rooten died June 17, 1973, in Chatham, Massachusetts in the retirement home he had designed himself.