Raul Roulien was a renowned Latino singer and actor who briefly worked in Hollywood during the 1930s, a time when the "Latin Lover" phenomenon was popularized by Italian actor Rudolph Valentino. This trend inspired Jewish-American actor Jacob Krantz to change his name to Ricardo Cortez, and Roulien went on to establish himself as a theater actor and composer.
Roulien emigrated to the United States in 1931 and signed with 20th Century-Fox, making his movie debut in a Spanish-language version of Charlie Chan Carries On, titled Eran trece, the same year. He gained recognition for his roles in Delicious (1931) and Flying Down to Rio (1933),a romantic comedy featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in which he played a romantic triangle with Gene Raymond and Dolores Del Río.
Roulien was married four times, first to actress Abigail Maia in the 1920s, followed by a marriage to actress and dancer Tosca Izabel Querze, who tragically died in a car accident on September 27, 1933. There were rumors that John Huston, the future Oscar-winning director and screenwriter, was responsible for the accident, which was allegedly covered up by MGM's Louis B. Mayer as a favor to Huston's father, the renowned stage and film actor Walter Huston.
After completing John Ford's The World Moves On (1934),Roulien returned to Brazil, where he continued to act throughout the 1930s. He married his third wife, actress Conchita Montenegro, in 1935, but they later divorced.
Roulien ceased acting in 1938 and went on to work in television as a director and host from 1950 to 1970. He also worked as a writer for newspapers and was married to his fourth wife, Valkyrie de Almeida, at the time of his death from pneumonia in São Paulo, Brazil on September 8, 2000, just a month shy of his 95th birthday.
