Actor and singer Emilio Delgado, the warm and familiar presence in children’s lives for 45 years as fix-it show owner Luis on Sesame Street, has died.
Emilio Delgado -For more than four decades he was a part of the show. The veteran actor’s wife Carol Delgado confirmed to the AP that the 81-year-old breathed his last on March 10 at their home in New York. He reportedly died from blood cancer multiple myeloma.
As Luis, Delgado, a Mexican American, got to play an ordinary, non-stereotypical Latino character at a time when there were few such depictions on TV, for adults or children.
“There really wasn’t any representation of actual people,” Delgado said in a 2021 interview on the Youtube series Famous Cast Words. “Most of the roles that I went out for were either for bandits or gang members.”
That changed with Sesame Street, where a diverse cast interacted with a diverse group of children, along with Jim Henson’s creations Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Elmo and Grover. Delgado joined the show in its third season in 1971. He said the producers embraced his suggestion to sprinkle Spanish terms into the script.
Delgado left the show when his contract was not renewed during retooling in 2016. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma late in 2020 but was still making appearances and giving interviews in 2021 until his health started to decline.
