Emilio Delgado, Luis on ‘Sesame Street’ for 45 years, dies

Emilio Delgado, the actor and singer who for 45 years was a warm and familiar presence in children’s lives and a rare Latino face on American television as fix-it shop owner Luis on “Sesame Street,” died Thursday.

His wife, Carol Delgado, told The Associated Press that Emilio Delgado died from the blood cancer multiple myeloma at their home in New York. He was 81.

As Luis, Delgado, a Mexican American, got to play an ordinary, non-stereotypical Latino character at a time when such depictions were few and far between 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 creations Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch,

Elmo and Grover.

Delgado joined the show starting with its third season in 1971. He said the producers embraced his suggestion to sprinkle Spanish terms into the script.

“The first time that I saw Big Bird walk on, my line was, ‘Big Bird!’” Delgado said in the 2021 interview. “But I didn’t say ‘Big Bird,’ I said, ‘pajaro!’”

After a quick meeting in which Delgado explained that “pajaro” meant “bird,” the producers decided to keep it in.

“I called him ‘pajaro’ from then on every time I saw him,” Delgado said.

Delgado was born in 1940 in Calexico, Calif., near the U.S.-Mexico border and raised a few miles away in Mexicali, Mexico.

From his home, he could hear music into the night from a pair of beer gardens across the street.

“I remember going to sleep to the sound of mariachis,” he said in a 2011 interview on the public television series, “Up Close with Patsy Smullin.”

He was enchanted, and decided to become a performer, singing whenever possible and appearing in school plays, with the full support of his proud parents.

As a young man he moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, and had little luck. He received a call out of the blue from the producers of “Sesame Street” in New York.

After an interview with “Sesame Street” producer Jon Stone, in which he spoke to Delgado, but didn’t ask for any kind of audition, he got the job.

“He didn’t want actors,” Delgado said in the 2021 interview. “He wanted real people.”