studying composition at some music academy in Rome while playing piano at clubs to support his wife and family. There was also Tony Russel (who was also President of ELDA, the English Language Dubbers Association), Roger Browne, Ed Mannix, Chuck Harrison, Chuck Howerton, Ted Rusoff, Bob Spafford, and so many others whose names just don’t come to me at the moment. Among the great ladies were Jodean Russo (Tony Russel’s ex- wife), Susan Muller (Bob Spafford’s wife), Carolyn De Fonseca (now married to Ted Rusoff), Carol Danell, Pat Starke, Sara Collingswood and, again, so many I just can’t bring to mind.
I dubbed every film I was in, with the exception of my role in GOD DOES NOT PAY ON SATUR- DAY in which I was dubbed by Paul Müller. I was in San Francisco doing MY FAIR LADY that summer and they just wouldn’t let me do the dubbing over the phone [laughs]! All of my Italian films were dubbed into Italian, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Danish.
In 1983, in New Delhi, I even saw KILL OR BE
KILLED dubbed in Hindi. I was with friends one day and one of them happened to be involved in the Indian film industry. He turned to me at one point and said, “I must ask you, my friend, I saw a movie last evening and there is an Italian actor who looks so much like you that it might be your karmic double.” When he told me the English title, I wondered if I should really tell him. I was mas- querading as my newest life-persona, Jon Chris- tian Eagle, in that period, yet one of the ladies with us knew that at one point in my past I had been an actor. She pressed me into admitting it was me. Well, in spite of my objections, I was dragged kicking and protesting to see Robert Mark, the Italian cowboy, reciting his lines in impeccable Hindi with a north-Urdu accent. It was an awful film to begin with, but to see myself spouting Hindi, I couldn’t help it and enjoyed the hour-and-a-half in spite of myself. Never laughed so hard in my life. Everybody in the theater kept shushing me. What an experience! And here I sat, beard and Turban, looking every inch the Western holy-man, laughing wildly over a serious adult Western. I ab- solutely scandalized my Indian friends, but we had a great laugh about it afterwards.
During your time in Italy, did you ever come across or work with director Mario Bava? I know who Mario is, but I never worked di- rectly with him. I dubbed films of his, though I don’t recall any specific titles. [According to the late Mel Welles, who directed the English dub- bing sessions, Dana dubbed the principal role
30
Being around so many lovely actresses during this period, did you date any of them? I suppose, like all actors, when you are thrown into constant contact and relative short and fast intimate relationships, you have the occasional fling. For the most part, my romances were with people far removed from the cinema, with the ex- ception of my co-star in SICARRIO 77, Alicia Brandette. We were very close for quite a while— for many years, in fact.
Did you pal around with any of the other Ameri- can or European actors then working in Italy? Roger Moore and his wife and I were friends in the early ’60s while in Rome. In the late ’50s, I had done a small part in Roger’s big hit for Warner Bros., THE MIRACLE [1959]. It seemed that ev- eryone I had ever known was in the Eternal City at the time. Clint Eastwood and I were friends for a time, since we were both doing the same genre funny-stuff. I dubbed so many of the famous Ital- ian film stars that many of them also eventually became good friends.
How did the American actors feel about working in Italian popular cinema?
Some loved it, and others hated having to deal with the volatile and oft-times irrational (by Holly- wood standards) behavior of the Roman cinema folks. You really had to be there for a long time to understand that these minds had evolved out of a culture that carried more than two thousand years of personality and cultural traits in their psyches.
played by Stephen Forsyth in HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, 1969. —Ed.]
HANDLE WITH CARE [1967] was another spy film. That was a ball to make. The gal who played
the femme fatale, Spela Rozin, was a gal-pal at the time, and we had a lot of fun filming in Spain and Tunisia. She was from Yugoslavia and we did some traveling in her country. Luisa Rivelli was a good friend and fun to work with, also. It was just a down-and-out great group of people to work and play with. In the Italian cut, there is a long se- quence in which I run all over Sidi Busaid, Tuni- sia, in bathing trunks. Don’t know why they cut this out of the English-dubbed version, but a friend in Rome says that many of these films were bought for later circulation in Muslim countries, and they might not have approved of a half-naked Ameri- can male running from the bad guys through Tu- nisian markets. So some of the scene got trimmed for international release.
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