Louis Dalton

Louis Dalton is an Irish actor, producer and playwright whose work is as highly regarded and still relevant today, all these years later, as it was in first produced in the Abbey between the late 1930s and the ’50s.

Born in Dublin in 1900, Louis was part of a family which ran its own fit-up theatrical outfit, which toured the towns and villages of Ireland, including West Cork. Having been a civil servant and part-time cartoonist, Dalton’s career gravitated towards the theatre.

Having had some of his earlier plays staged by the Abbey, he was brought in as a producer and even after his untimely death at the age of 50 in 1951, further plays of his were produced at the Abbey with even greater success.

He was married to the actress Annie Dalton, whom older people will remember as the gossiping Minnie Brennan in RTE’s first rural drama series, ‘The Riordans’. They split up however and, when Louis Dalton died, Annie married actor John Cowley, who played the part of Tom Riordan.