Raul Roulien: Movies & Filmography

Raul Roulien, born Raul Salvador Intini Pepe on 7 October 1904 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, emerged from a modest immigrant family—his father Biagio Pepe and mother Anna Intini were Italian expatriates—to become a seminal figure in early Brazilian and Hollywood cinema. From the tender age of eight he performed under the name Raul Pepe, delighting audiences that included President Rodrigues Alves and his godfather, the celebrated writer Ruy Barbosa, showcasing a precocious vocal talent that would define his lifelong career. In the late 1920s he traveled to Buenos Aires, where he sang at Cine Porteño and earned renown as a chansonier, pianist, and composer, an experience that cemented his theatrical ambition. Upon returning to Brazil in 1928 he co‑founded the Abigail Maia‑Raul Roulien Theater Company with his first wife, actress Abigail Maia, pioneering a “theater of frivolity” that offered rapid, entertaining interludes between film screenings and reshaped local performance culture. The success of this venture propelled him to New York in 1931, where Fox Studios signed him during the waning popularity of the “Latin lover” archetype; he quickly appeared in the Spanish‑language version of Charlie Chan Carries On and the English‑language film Delicious, where he portrayed a Russian composer and sang a Gershwin‑written number. Between 1931 and 1934 he appeared in eighteen films, most famously Flying Down to Rio (1933), sharing the screen with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their inaugural dance together and delivering the memorable tune “Orchids in the Moonlight.” His personal life was marked by multiple marriages—Abigail Maia (1928‑1930), Diva Tosca (1932‑1933, whose tragic death on Sunset Boulevard shocked the industry), Conchita Montenegro (1935‑1937), and Nelly Rodrigues (from 1950)—reflecting both the glamour and volatility of his era. After retiring from the screen in 1970, Roulien remained a cultural touchstone in Brazil until his death in São Paulo on 8 September 2000, remembered as the first Brazilian male star to achieve Hollywood fame and as a versatile artist whose contributions spanned acting, singing, screenwriting, and directing.