Dubbed in Rome

For most fans of English dubbing in Rome, the names we most closely associate with this industry are Ted Rusoff, Carolyn de Fonseca, Nick Alexander, Frank von Kuegelgen, Edward Mannix, Susan Spafford, Pat Starke, Robert Sommer, Tony La Penna and others who spent some 40 to 50 years doing dubbing. The majority of people who were involved with dubbing in Rome were not on the scene for that long, however. If anything, the English dubbing world was like a revolving door of people – with some involved for a couple of years before moving on to something else, whereas others were only briefly roped into it while in town for some months. One dubber belonging to the latter category was Don Stoneman, a.k.a. E. Donnell Stoneman, a former New York stage actor turned director/producer who enjoyed a very short-lived foray into English dubbing when he was in Rome for a few months in 1963. What makes Stoneman’s brush with dubbing so interesting in spite of its brevity is that he chronicled his exper...

  Stephen Garrett was one of the all-time great character voices of the English dubbing scene in Rome. He was one of the real old-timers whose dubbing credits date back all the way to at least the early 1950s, and this, combined with his premature death in the mid 1960s, unfortunately means that a great deal of his work has most likely been lost to the sands of time. For fans of Italian cinema of the early 1960s, though, Stephen’s delightfully gruff and imposing voice should still be instantly recognizable. He lent his fantastic voice to countless colorful villains from that era and was especially active in peplum and swashbuckler films, often dubbing the likes of Andrea Aureli and Livio Lorenzon. Check out the video below for samples of a few of his most memorable dubbing roles: As with so many of the dubbing old-timers of Rome, there’s very little information available about Stephen, and it has not been possible to determine where he was from or when and why he originally end...