Luis van Rooten

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Luis van Rooten, (born November 29, 1906 in Mexico City - died June 17, 1973 in Chatnam, Massachusettes), was an American film actor. He was christened Luis d'Antin van Rooten.

He earned his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an architect before deciding to pursue film work in Hollywood sometime during World War II. His facility with languages made van Rooten an in-demand military radio announcer during the war and he conducted a variety of broadcasts in Italian, Spanish and French. This led naturally into film work, often in roles requiring an accent or skill with dialects. He is particularly known for his villainous roles, and played Nazi ringleader Heinrich Himmler in both Hitler's Madman (1943) and Operation Eichmann (1961).

Van Rooten played supporting roles with a wide swath of film stars, including Alan Ladd in Two Years Before the Mast (1946) and Beyond Glory (1948), Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, Maureen O'Sullivan, and Ray Milland in The Big Clock (1948), Veronica Lake in Saigon (1948), Edward G. Robinson in The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), and Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker in Detective Story 1951.

As the 1950s arrived, van Rooten found steady work in live television, radio serials and in narration. He was the voice of the evil Roxor in the late 40s revival of the radio serial "Chandu the Magician". He also performed on Broadway in Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet (1958) and John Osborne's Luther (1963).

He is best-known for his character work in films, but van Rooten was also a skilled artist and designer and the author of several sophisticated books of humor. These include Van Rooten's Book of Improbable Saints (Viking, 1975), The Floriculturist's Vade Mecum of Exotic and Recondite Plants, Shrubs and Grasses, and One Malignant Parasite (Doubleday, 1973), and Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames (Viking, 1967, ISBN 978-0140057300). In Mots D'Heures', Van Rooten used French words and phrases which, when spoken aloud with a French accent produce English Mother Goose rhymes.

Van Rooten died June 17, 1973 in Chatham, Massachusetts, where he and his family had a vacation home.