hadn’t punished me so mercilessly, all that it would have been good for was to pee through, and that any future hoped-for children would have never glimpsed the light of day. Thankfully, the rest of the movie was a walk in the park—by comparison.
How did you get involved in the dubbing end of the business?
While working on CLEOPATRA, somebody heard my voice and said, “Boy, you ought to look into dubbing.” A gal-pal from Australia insisted I go along to a test for a new project a few days later, and I scored the lead antagonist, played on film by Jacques Sernas, in a Steve Reeves sword and sandal film. [Probably DUEL OF THE TITANS, 1961. —Ed.] I seemed to have a knack for “sync” and had fun doing it. That was the start; over the next ten years, I dubbed over 360 Italian, Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Indian films. By 1967, Dan Sturkie and I were being touted as be- ing the highest-paid “dubbers” in Europe. I don’t know if this was so, but I made some good money at it and met a lot of great people.
How does the whole process of dubbing a film unfold? For instance, how do they cast the voices? And how many times must the voice actor watch the movie as it is being dubbed? First of all, there are what are called “voice tests,” where dozens of people try-out for different characters by standing before a podium, watch- ing a small strip of film called a “loop,” until they think they have the sync or synchronization with the actor’s mouth, labials, fricatives, etc.—and hopefully the inflections that portray what it looks like the actor is attempting to depict. Then you try it; sometimes many, many times. Getting the syn- chronization of lip movements and vowel sounds, especially fricatives—where the lips and teeth can be seen coming into contact—was damn near impossible on Japanese films, where the movement of the lips hardly lends itself to English. The Japa- nese don’t move their mouths like we in the occidental countries do at all, and they have so few fricatives or “M” (as in mother) sounds or lip shapes—very difficult if not impossible to dub convincingly. Some people find syncing next to impossible and others adapt with ease. You have undoubt- edly seen dubbed films in which the “M”s, “P”s and “B”s don’t even come close to matching the lip movements of the original. Sometimes you have a director like the late, great Nick Alexander, who would actually spend the time (sometimes 50 to 60 takes) to get a line letter-perfect, then others
who will take anything thing they can just to get it into the can and move on to the next job. Gene Luotto was one of those directors I loved to work with, because he would not settle for anything me- diocre. It was either right or you just didn’t get out of the sala doppiaggio [dubbing salon] until it was.
Do any particular dubbing challenges come to mind?
I once went 86 takes on a film called Metti una sera a cena [1969, also known as LOVE CIRCLE or ONE NIGHT AT DINNER] in which I dubbed the great French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. There was a line in which he says, “What if, say...” (he turns away from the camera) “... one night at dinner, I were to ask you...” (long pause)... then he turns back and finishes the ques- tion. He had an odd way of under-articulating, as did some French actors during this period who were attempting to do the Marlon Brando mumble. Try as I might, I simply could not see it. I thought I would never dub again, so excruciating was that evening in the sala. It was mid-summer in Rome’s sweltering heat, and the small studio had next-to- no air circulation of any kind. The studio was built during the late 1940s. I thought Tony Musante and Roger Browne were going to take out a con- tract on me before it was over, as we all had lines in this scene. The director finally had the line re- cut and I did it as an extraneous loop so that they could go out for café, a cigarette and some fresh air. I finally got it, but it almost killed the joy of dubbing for me. I did do probably several dozen films after that, but I’ll never forget those hours of thinking that this must be what Purgatory was re- ally like. I used to imagine that if I didn’t get my act together that, when I died, God would send me to a place where I would spend eternity in that same hot, muggy dubbing sala, doing the same line over and over and over and over and over and over. That was my idea of real everlasting torment.
Who were some of the voice actors and actresses working in Italy at that time?
The greats were Tony La Penna (who did most of the four-ball voices for the ’60s greats) and Frank Latimore, who did Steve Reeves’ voice in one of the films I dubbed; Bill Kuehl, who went on to be one of the big voices at Titra in NY, was one of the greatest voices in the history of the business. I don’t think any of these guys are still with us. There was Roland Bartrop, Mel Welles, Mel Gaines, Dan Sturkie, all deceased; Bill Conti, who did the ROCKY score, even did a few stints in the sala in those years when he was a struggling musician
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