Traveled to Italy at one point in his early career and appeared in minor parts on such films as The Statue (1971) with David Niven. Later went to Mexico City where he filmed the Venice Film Festival award winner, "Run, Johnny, Run."

Frequently tours in his one-man show "The Memoirs of Abraham Lincoln," a program that has been running on-and-off for over a decade and a half.

Trained at the University of Minnesota and at St. Cloud State University, he began his career on stage in the 1960s at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis where he worked with founding director Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who also founded the Stratford Festival of Canada and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan) in Ireland.

A longstanding player on the Los Angeles stage scene, particularly with the Matrix Theatre, Van Dusen received the 1985 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Performance for 'Undiscovered Country' at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

During Christmas 2005, he narrated Roger Wagner's musical production of "Christmas Story According to St. Luke" with the Cantori Domino sacred music choral group. His wife June, an alto, is a long-standing member of the choir.