Rodd in security guard uniform, captured between takes with Cindy Carol on the set of GIDGET GOES TO ROME.
I didn’t mind since they had to pay me double. I was also too numb to really get too excited about the seeming injustice of it all. Carol and I always had a good laugh over the fact that the guy, Fabrizio, who roasted the master tape was the fonico who mixed most of the films we dubbed at Fono Roma. After that incident, we would al- ways admonish Fabrizio, “Stia attento! Non lascia il nastro adoso’ al termosifone!” (“Pay attention! Don’t leave the tape on the radiator!”) He must have apologized to me a thousand times, down through the years [laughs]…
Did you have other opportunities to use your singing talents professionally?
I made a couple of cuts for Italian TV of arias
from TOSCA and OTHELLO; I have no idea what happened to them. The most fun I had singing was when I used to come back to Frisco and Sac- ramento in the summer season to do musical com- edy: MY FAIR LADY, PAINT YOUR WAGON, WISH YOU WERE HERE, THE PAJAMA GAME, OKLAHOMA, KIS- MET, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, etc. I think I did that for about six years.
How did you come to work on the John Wayne film CAST A GIANT SHADOW [1966]? I think it was in 1963. I had done a small role in the 20th Century Fox film, GIDGET GOES TO ROME. I was dubbing the part one day, and the future production coordinator of CAST A GIANT SHADOW just happened to stop by to see our di- rector, who was a friend. I had played a US em- bassy Marine in the Gidget thing, and he said they needed GI types for various bit parts and would I like to stop over to meet [director] Melville Shavelson. So, bright and early the next morn, I hopped on my 650 Triumph and rode out into a country village where they were filming a scene with the Duke. A couple of days later, we spent the day shooting a scene where a bell tower Ger- man sniper starts sniping, and Duke shouts, “Hey, Lt. Whatever-my-name-was, get that SOB.” I did a couple of “Yes, sirs!,” spent the day with the Duke, who I already knew from LA—and, as usual, got cut out of the film.
Two weeks later, I was shooting a spread for
PLAYBOY in Sardegna and ran into him and Kirk Douglas, who both had their yachts anchored
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