Interview with Geneviève Hersent

It is with much pride and joy that I present to you this exclusive interview with one of real pillars of the dubbing scene in Rome: the great Geneviève Hersent, whose wonderful voice graced Italian films for more than 30 years, and in three different languages! Truth be told, this is an interview that almost didn’t happen, because I’d nearly given up the hope of ever being able to identify Geneviève!

I’ve been fascinated by the dubbing of Italian films ever since the 2000s, and through the years, I’ve spent considerable hours acting as a ‘dubbing detective’. A work that’s amazingly fun whenever you manage to actually identify a familiar dubbing voice, but which more often than not is frankly quite difficult and frustrating – at least when it comes to English dubbing. Because Italian films never included English dubbing credits, and so trying to identify the English voices from films dubbed in Rome can often feel like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Out of all the known Rome dubbers, Geneviève Hersent proved one of the most difficult to identify. She was one of those voices that I’d known forever and heard in countless Italian films, but it was to take me many, many years before I was finally able to actually put a name and a face to her long-familiar voice. I could probably fill an entire blog post about seemingly endless search to identify her, but suffice to say that at the end of 2023, I finally succeeded not only in identifying Geneviève, but also in getting in touch with her!

Through a series of emails back and forth, I’ve had the great fortune of getting to know a truly lovely, kind and generous lady whose razor-sharp memory and delightful sense of humor never ceases to amaze me. Geneviève is so full of fascinating memories and anecdotes from her amazing life and I am both honored and grateful to her for agreeing to let me interview her about her incredible career. I hope you’ll all have fun joining Geneviève and me on this trip down memory lane as she takes us through the ins and outs of dubbing in both English, French and Italian! Enjoy!

 

Geneviève Hersent: Hello Johan and thank you for your interest. I’ll try to be clear in this preamble, as my life contains rather ‘different lives’ over the course of time, lives well lived, with different periods, different names, diverse yet compatible professions. I’ve practiced several professions in three languages and three different countries: actress, singer, journalist, press officer, photographer, translator, interpreter and finally, for the last 20 years, volunteer assistant to a French doctor (Dr. Jacques Vigne), a psychiatrist who trained in Paris but left for India to study at the Hindu University of Benares, where he lived for ten years with a Master (Swami Vijayânanda), alternating periods in ashrams and hermitages in the Himalayas. A devotee of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy, he divides his time between meditation and writing books on spirituality (Albin Michel – Le Relié), conferences and seminars around the world, building bridges between East and West and teaching the practices of Buddhism and Hinduism. He also supports various humanitarian projects in Nepal and India. Having been linked to the teachings of Mâ Anandamayî (Ma Anandamayee), a great Indian ‘wise woman’ (1896-1982), he is now connected to Tenzin Palmo, an English nun who spent 11 years in a snow-covered cave in the Himalayas and now lives on the border with Tibet.

It’s important to point this out because my life as Geneviève (Mahâjyoti) literally changed direction after I met him, which I describe in my book Du cinéma... à la spiritualité (published in March 2022 by Editions du Petit Véhicule in Nantes – France).

 

Johan Melle: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, Geneviève! Can you start by telling me a little about your background and your early artistic career under the name ‘Geneviève Gerald’? I understand you became an actress at a very early age…

 

GH: My birth name is Geneviève George, but it was under the name of Geneviève Gerald that I began my artistic career in Paris at a very early age, continuing in Rome under the name of Geneviève Hersent, the pseudonym of the French actor Philippe Hersent (whose real name was Bernard Koevoets, a name of Dutch origin) who was to become my husband, hence my name Koevoets from now on.

The Indian initiatory name ‘Mahâjyoti’ was given to me in India by Jacques Vigne’s old Master, Swami Vijayananda, and it means: Mahâ = great, and Jyoti = light. It’s not easy to wear, but you have to try to be worthy of it!

My father was a lyric singer and my mother was a writer, author of books, music composer, and also a humorist – the first female humorist songwriter in Paris at the time (satirical cabaret entertainer). So the little Geneviève that was I was brought up in art and music, but also in the deprivations of war (1939-1945), bombings, changing schools... until adolescence, when I immediately turned to cinema, first in pretty small roles, then as a stunt double for famous actresses whom I replaced in dangerous stunts because I was a tomboy, and after having adored ballet, I threw myself into horse-riding and fencing, dueling on horseback and taking part as a man (with moustache and goatee) in adventurous cloak-and-dagger films, or films retracing the history and epic of dueling through the ages… like the film entitled Le duel à travers les âges (1952).

A young Geneviève during her acting years in Paris as Geneviève Gerald. From Geneviève's personal collection.

JM: Your husband Philippe Hersent was a very well-known actor who was active in French cinema ever since the 1930s. The two of you relocated to Rome sometime in the mid to late 1950s. Why did you decide to leave Paris in favor of Rome?

 

GH: I met the French actor Philippe Hersent, who became my husband a few years later, resulting in a happy union of 34 years! Philippe was everything to me: my husband, my lover, my father (whom I no longer had), my brother, my friend, my advisor, my partner in sport, my everything! I owe what I am to him and his love. He was 24 years older than me, but he looked much younger, and I at 15 looked like I was 20...

Philippe was already a well-known actor in France and Belgium, both in the theater and the cinema (where he appeared in some 100 films in character roles), and it was by chance, thanks to a French actor friend who was already well known in Italy (Pierre Cressoy), that he was chosen from a photo by an Italian director (Adolfo Pizzi) to come to Rome to play the leading role in a film about miners on the island of Elba [Ritrovarsi all’alba (1955)], which was shot on location. It was towards the end of the 50s. Little did we know that this would mark the start of a long and successful career for him in Italy, where many European and American actors were then being called to Cinecittà (Clint Eastwood being a striking example).

Philippe Hersent, Geneviève's husband, here in a publicity still from the wartime espionage film London Calling North Pole (1956), released in the US as House of Intrigue. From Geneviève's personal collection.

Geneviève and Philippe in a scene from the short film Les cow-boys de Paris (1948). From Geneviève's personal collection.

 

JM: Philippe successfully continued his film career in Italy and was much in demand as a character actor. You, however, chose not to continue with films and instead became a journalist and press agent. What prompted you to make this career change?

 

GH: Off we went, in our little Citroën 2CV, me with my guitar and Philippe with his fencing weapons (swords, rapiers, foils, boarding sabres) protruding from the roof of the car, up the Col de La Spezia in the Italian mountains. There was no freeway at the time, and we climbed at a very pushy, puffing pace, much to the amazement and amusement of the crowds lining the roadside, who (we didn’t yet realize) were waiting for the Giro d’Italia, the well-known racing cyclist Grand Tour of Italy. The laughing carabinieri let us climb the side of the Col, mocking us... until the cyclists began to speed past, almost brushing us! It was a different era! We’d learned a few Italian words in the Berlitz School method: vino bianco secco subito! Or, to put it another way, ‘a little shot of white wine’! Our arrival in Italy was therefore memorable.

It was while telling this story, in Italian and in my own way, that my account of it was published by a Roman journalist friend of mine in the transalpine magazine L’Automobile, and this was the starting point for my career in the press. While Philippe was shooting films, I was interviewing well-known actresses and actors for French film magazines for which I had become the Rome correspondent (Cinémonde, Ciné Révélation and La Cinématographie Française, the latter being the official journal of film producers and exhibitors). I had an easy way with words and a sense of humor, and my approaches to the Parisian newspapers had been accepted. In the meantime, I’d obtained my Foreign Press Card in Rome, and I covered a lot of events, later even for foreign newspapers and for an American radio station (ABC Network), becoming the French representative of a Los Angeles public relations office (Paul Marsh & Associates) which represented two future stars of the film world: Adam West (the first Batman) and the future great Clint Eastwood, whose career I contributed to publicizing in Italy with our great friend Sergio Leone, a delightfully humorous man who was as skinny then as he was fat later on!

Cinémonde and Ciné Révélation, two French movie magazines for which Geneviève was the Rome correspondent.

JM: It seems that most of the people who were active in the dubbing industry in Rome fell into this career path by chance rather than deliberately seek it out. How – and when – did you originally become involved with dubbing? And what came first? Dubbing in English, or dubbing in French?

 

GH: One thing leading to another, Philippe and I became a very active couple in Rome, with Philippe shooting a lot of films (peplums and westerns) which were typically Italian-French co-productions. He shot over a hundred in all, and it would take too long to list them all here. He was asked on both sides of the border to come and dub himself, as co-productions required actors of several nationalities, and everyone recited their lines in their own language. This gave rise to a period of dubbing and post-synchronization, and so, little by little, the dubbing companies – Italian, Anglo-American and French – asked Philippe to come and dub himself, which was the law. And as I had dubbed myself in Paris at the start of my very young acting career, I knew the work and was asked to do it too...

This was the start of the resumption of my career as an actress, while continuing to write my reports as a journalist, at home, quietly, because as a correspondent in Rome I worked and wrote at home, I never belonged to any office. I was a professional freelancer! That’s how my acting career rebounded in dubbing... and first and foremost thanks to American dubbing in Rome.

It was dubbing in English that started it all for me. Our friends Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca, eminent dubbers, called me into the Via Margutta studio one day to try dubbing a very nice role that required a French accent in English. They had scheduled a whole turn (four hours work at the time) in preparation for a possible stammer... but it turned out that I was so good that the whole role was ‘put in the box’ in two hours!

Geneviève on the beach in Fregene, near Rome, sometime in the 1960s. From Geneviève's personal collection.

JM: Can you take us through the dubbing process in those days and explain the technique a little? What were the biggest and most frequent challenges you and your colleagues faced when doing this work, and how many takes were typically required to get the lines in sync with the mouth movements of the on-screen actors?

 

GH: It should be explained that in Italy, dubbing is done with a technique that we refer to in France as à l’image (in the image), meaning you have nothing but your own eyes to aid you. I talk about this in my book Du cinéma... à la spiritualité: with the Italian system, you stick visually to the lips of the actor you’re dubbing, memorizing the dialogue by heart in rather short loops. In Paris, however, dubbing is recorded while using what we call a bande rythmo (a rhythm band). With this system, the dialogue, written beforehand, is projected on a scrolling band of film below the main image. You speak as the text scrolls before you on the screen, saying the words exactly when they pass under the mark of a bar (knowing how to read naturally is a required quality, otherwise you easily get the ‘dubbing tone’ of old westerns with John Wayne). So, two totally different techniques, and it drove the French actors from Paris crazy when they were called by the co-producers to come to Rome to dub themselves, as they weren’t used to dubbing à l’image! It should be added that dubbing, regardless of technique, is real mental gymnastics.

It’s true that for the Italians, the sync was only good when they exceeded three syllables, something that was inconceivable with the bande rythmo! For French dubbing in Rome, we started dubbing with the Italian system, i.e. à l’image, which was more spontaneous but less precise in terms of sync, and required a good memory and, if possible, good reflexes and good eyesight, not forgetting, for any dubbing, the ability to work standing up all day, as well as great concentration. There was one drawback, however, with the rhythm band: if you weren’t a very good dubber, you could end up with that infamous ‘dubbing tone’ that’s so characteristic, where you can feel the reading. As the actors who came from Paris were completely lost without their rhythm band, which ran at the same time as the projection of the scene on the screen, Jean Louis, our French dubbing director and an excellent actor himself, had a moviola (a kind of large table/console generally used for editing films viewed on a small screen and for post-synchronization, to create the famous rhythm band to be written for dialogue adaptation) brought from Paris to our recording studio. The studio manager had called in an old model moviola that made a deafening noise like a fishing boat engine – touc, touc, touc... but it worked very well. However, the Italian dubbers didn’t want it and hated the band system, because they liked being able to improvise at the last minute, as with Federico Fellini!

In any case, whether using one or the other system (à l’image or bande rythmo), the mechanical construction of dialogue in the equivalent language is very particular and is not called a translation but an adaptation. It’s based mainly on labials (m, p, b) and half-labials (v, f), while taking into account mouth openings on our vowels (a, e, i, o, u). It’s a real mental gymnastics exercise that requires a lot of imagination, especially when a scene is based on a good comic pun! Because comedy is often rendered by ready-made idiomatic expressions, it forces you to not only change the meaning of the sentence, but also to change the entire sequence, because we don't laugh in the same way or at the same things in every language!

Sometimes, for a better technical check in the moviola, we played the small piece of film backwards... and then we’d hear funny things like, for example, the name Jean, which phonetically sounds like ange (angel) backwards!

Example of an actress dubbing with the use of French bande rythmo technique.

JM: I think it’s very interesting what you say about translation versus adaptation, and sometimes having to make some significant changes, especially where humor is concerned. I imagine that for script adaptors, it must have been a constant balancing act between changing the dialogue in order to achieve perfect sync and at the same time trying to remain faithful to the original intention of the script. Just how much creative and artistic freedom did you have when doing this work? Were you allowed to make significant changes to the dialogue, and did someone from the film’s production have to approve of the dubbing script?

 

GH: Good adaptors and good dubbing directors always had freedom. In the good productions, all the necessary time was given to dubbing/actors. A lot of time if necessary!

In the big productions they wanted to approve the dubbing script. In the ordinary ones, maybe not… I don’t know. It was not my job technically… and I was at tennis!!!

 

JM: How many dubbers were you usually in the studio recording together? Two or three? Or could you sometimes be even more for scenes that involved several characters speaking?

 

GH: Whether or not there were many of us during the recordings depended on how the work plan had been drawn up, and on the availability of the actors. For French dubbing, we were a small gang of about ten actresses and fifteen actors living in Rome. Plus those who came from Paris to dub themselves. In the latter case, given the travel and accommodation expenses involved, Jean Louis scheduled them to be recorded on a separate soundtrack. Meaning they were without a partner to respond to their lines. Attention remained solely on the character. In this way, an entire role could be dubbed fairly quickly, since only one actor had to be directed separately, and then the different tracks of the other voices were assembled in the mix.

 

JM: The French are widely known – perhaps even notorious – for their reluctance to speak English. And yet you mastered this language so flawlessly that you regularly dubbed films into English, and unless you were doing a character that required a pronounced French accent, there’s not a trace of an accent in your dubbing performances. How did you learn English so well, and how were you able to make your accent disappear so completely?

 

GH: It’s true that the French in general aren’t very good at foreign languages! They probably think that the French language is so rich that they don’t need to make any effort to learn another, which is a big mistake, because every country and every language has its own richness, but the French language is nevertheless recognized as the diplomatic language par excellence, with all its finesse and nuances. I’d chosen to learn English at school and honed my skills by spending several months, over four years in a row, accompanying the great Miss Teen International pageant in the US (under the auspices of the American television network ABC Network), where every year I acted as chaperone to a young ‘Teen Ager actress’ chosen by a local newspaper, for whom I had to report on the regions we crossed in North America. It was an opportunity for me to travel this country, where I felt as if I had already lived in another life, and to visit a good twenty cities and extraordinary sites such as the Grand Canyon, California, Oklahoma, Atlanta, Texas, Dallas, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Denver (Colorado), Palm Spring, the Navajo Indians, Hollywood! New York!!! As a woman, I was more suited to the American style than to the Italian way of life... I even still have my old western saddle, boots, cowgirl hat, lassos and spurs, which still adorn the entrance to my apartment, along with the appropriate photos on horseback! I still dream about it...

 

JM: One dubbing director that cast you very often for the English versions was Gene Luotto, who was widely regarded as one of the best adaptors and directors. What are your recollections of Gene, and what, in your opinion, made him such a good dubbing director?

 

GH: I remember Gene Luotto as an excellent director, as do I with most of his English-speaking colleagues. But I don’t have any particular anecdotes about him, because I was particularly focused on my English, whether with him or with the others. I listened obediently to what I had to give as inflections (different from the French rhythm) to the point where I had the impression of ‘speaking out of tune’ as we would use to say... So I relied by ear on their directions. But Gene was very courteous and gracious.

 

JM: Ted Rusoff was another famous dubbing director of English versions, and like you, a real polyglot who was fluent in many different languages. He and his wife Carolyn de Fonseca are among the most recognizable of all the English voices of Italian cinema. Can you share some memories and anecdotes of Ted and Carolyn and what they were like in and outside of the dubbing salas?

 

GH: Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca were excellent friends. I first met Carolyn through a French actor friend, Pierre Cressoy, who was very well known in Italy, on the beach at Fregene, near Rome. Carolyn had a great sense of humor! She was undoubtedly the key that led me to English dubbing, with that first lovely role I mentioned earlier. Ted was indeed a perfect polyglot, speaking French very well, and our French dubbing team often called on him to come and dub characters with English accents. He was also a scholar, and helped me a great deal in my field as a translator when I had a movie script to translate into French called Shuffleboard about, among other things, John Le Carré and America. At the time, I had become a member of A.I.T.I. (Italian Association of Translators and Interpreters), which was part of UNESCO. I was attached to the Rome Pilot Center as a trilingual international escort for important personalities visiting Rome and as a translator/interpreter. Thank you, Ted! He was kindness itself, in a delightful mood, always ready to help... As for Carolyn, I’m still making the recipes she taught me (raw mini cauliflowers and celery stalks stuffed with cottage cheese mixed with crushed tuna and sprinkled with curry powder! Delicious as an aperitif!)

 

Carolyn de Fonseca and Ted Rusoff, who got Geneviève started in dubbing.

 

JM: Some of the other hard-working, long-time English dubbing directors were Nick Alexander, Tony La Penna (and later also his son Leslie), Lewis E. Ciannelli, Frank Von Kuegelgen, Richard McNamara, Robert Spafford, George Higgins, John Gayford, Christopher Cruise, Cesare Mancini, Geoffrey Copleston and Larry Dolgin. I don’t know if you worked with all of them, but can you perhaps share some memories of working with the ones you do remember?

 

GH: Yes, I was called on to dub in English with all the directors you mentioned, and always with the same pleasure. I worked a lot with Frank Von Kuegelgen and Tony La Penna, but the one who first called me for the leading role in a film, played by the actress Capucine, was Nick Alexander, who was so precise, so meticulous, that he himself gave the musical intonation of the tone he wanted and made me do it over and over again until he got it. I couldn’t give my own inflection; he wanted his musicality. When he asked me to come to the screening of the mixed and finished film, I didn’t recognize my own voice! And he said to me, “Do you see what you are able to do in English?!” I couldn’t believe it... who was this actress who spoke English so well?!

Famed English dubbing director Nick Alexander.

JM: Can we also take a moment to remember some of the sync assistants (also often referred to as “sala assistants”), who assisted the dubbing directors and were in charge of seeing to that everyone was in sync and on time? I know Gene Luotto always used his niece Clementina. Do you remember if the other directors had a regular sync assistant they preferred to use, too? And did you yourself ever do this job?

 

GH: Yes, I remember Clementina Luotto well, but I can’t put a name to the other dubbing assistants... There were many of them and they were all just as patient.

Yes, for a few years I was Jean Louis’s assistant in the last decades of French dubbing, succeeding Annie Alberti-Landry (the wife of French actor Gérard Landry). We were both actresses and assistants.

To sum up the work, the dubbing director’s job – and this is still the case today – is to supervise the dubbers and give artistic direction, while his or her assistant supervises the sync, announces the loop numbers out loud and writes the correct take numbers on his or her dubbing script, which is similar to a movie script divided into sequences, and which will be used to re-edit the loops at the mixing stage.

When I say loops, that’s really what it was in the 60s and 70s, because the films were cut into slices, like a sausage, and in Rome in a dubbing establishment where we used to work, the slices were hung from the ceiling, like hams! Later, film was replaced by VHS cassettes with a time code, which you simply had to enter at the beginning and end of each loop.

Working as a dubbing room assistant was a more technical, organizational job, requiring a lot of common sense and patience, since we weren’t a large team and we had to juggle with the availability of our actors, who all had other occupations at the same time. Drawing up the schedule of the dubbing turns and establishing the work plan according to a chart with the loop numbers at the top and the names of the corresponding characters on the left was mental acrobatics! It was maddening for a perfectionist like me, as we rarely managed to schedule the actors playing together at the same time! Naturally, I preferred to present myself in the role of the multi-faceted actress!

 

JM: You are in a rather unique position thanks to having regularly dubbed films in both English, French and Italian language. How would you compare the three? Were there any notable differences in the working methods and in what was focused on? Who were the most concerned with accuracy in sync etc.?

 

GH: There’s no doubt that the English dubbing group was the most meticulous and efficient, as there were far more of them than our small French group.

ELDA [English Language Dubbers Association] first and later ARA [Associated Recording Artists] were English or American-speaking organizations – very well trained and equipped, with very efficient people at the helm, very precise statutes, and great rigor. In fact, there were differences in the way British-English was spoken compared to American-English, which sometimes changed completely!

As for the Italians, they were masters at their own game, where dubbing was king for two major reasons: their neo-realistic habit of shooting with people off the street meant that they always had to post-synchronize with professional voices afterwards, and their habit of hiring actors of different nationalities to meet the needs of co-productions also meant that they had to dub all of them, as each actor was shooting in his or her own language. Let’s just say that with Italian dubbing, the sync seemed a little more optional... the important thing was to fill the mouth openings, and if that went beyond a few syllables, all the better! On the other hand, in English or French dubbing, every lip movement was meticulously respected, even down to the breaths or murmurs.

 

JM: I realize that most of these films were all dubbed very quickly one after another, and that because of this it can be difficult to discern them from one another, but are there any particular films or actresses that you remember dubbing into English?

 

GH: Alas, I wasn’t there long enough to see what others were doing in a language other than my own... The speed of dubbing was often linked to co-production problems and the release dates of films in their own countries. But everyone tried to do their best, and dubbed films weren’t like rolls from the oven! It’s possible that some jealous people sought to discredit the work done in Italy, where nevertheless every company tried to do well, except when a few small adjacent groups tried to get in on the act and worked at high speed without the same quality criteria. But this only happened occasionally.

 

JM: As a matter of fact, I have noticed that there are certain very low-budget Italian films and also some cheap productions by the French company Eurociné that were dubbed in Rome, though not by ELDA/ARA, but by another company of rather questionable quality. Did you know any of the people involved in this work? I heard that some of the people involved may have been Bob Fiz and Charles Marshall…

 

GH: Yes, I remember Bob Fiz and Charles Marshall, and the people of ARA were furious, because it was rather cheap work. I dubbed once or twice for them… French accent in English, was not very often…

 

JM: Quite a few Italian films of the 1970s and 1980s were very graphic. For example, many brutally violent police/crime films, gory horror movies with zombies or cannibals, or erotic films with sexually explicit love scenes. How did you – and also your various dubbing colleagues – feel about having to dub such films? Were you guys shocked or upset by them, or did you find them silly and have a laugh about it…?

 

GH: It’s true that a lot of spaghetti westerns, fast-talking Italian-style comedies, horror films, kung fu movies, ancient Roman peplums and even a few porno films passed before our eyes, without forgetting some beautiful, classy films! It’s all part of life and work, whatever it may be, like a farmer who brings the smallest radish to life, as well as a field of wheat!

 

JM: One of your great strengths as a dubbing actress was your versatility of voice, and as a result you dubbed everything from very young girls to old women, and you did both heroines, villainesses and supporting or character parts, and in all sorts of movies (western, comedy, horror, fantasy, erotic etc). What kind of roles and what kind of films did you most enjoy doing?

 

GH: As I said earlier when I spoke of my ‘thousand facets’... I was a real ‘monkey’ with a gift for imitation that enabled me to dub roles ranging from newborn babies to toothless centenarians, from little boys to old duchesses, and not forgetting the leading roles that fell to me at the same time. It was a way of mentally splitting in two and playing several lives! I was never recognized, and I’ve heard the same said of the French actor/dubber Roger Carel in Paris, who successfully regaled himself with the most unusual voices! In Rome, whenever there was a rather bizarre creation to be dubbed, in one language or another, they’d call for Geneviève and the matter was settled.

What I enjoyed most was dubbing cartoons and children’s voices, especially those of little boys, as when I dubbed Rémy in the famous film Sans Famille (1970), then Pinocchio, or several dwarfs in Snow White as well as the witch with the booming, harsh laugh! And also the adorable little rabbit who thought he was a lion, which I dubbed in three languages and with three different titles: Leobunny in English, Leoniglio in Italian and Léopinpin in French... and where, it seems, my French accent in the other languages was no longer detectable, so significant was the distortion of my sour little voice, which seemed to have been done on purpose. I was even called in to replace the actress who was the voice of Calimero by imitating her while she was sick, and to record the Calimero song, which I still have on a cassette.

Gisella Mathews, also an excellent actress/director, who directed me in the three versions of the little rabbit, became a great friend and continued to call me Léopinpin for many years!

A Super 8 release of the rare cartoon Leoniglio, a.k.a. Leobunny, a.k.a. Léopinpin that Geneviève dubbed in three different languages.

Geneviève is the voice of the evil witch in the French dub of the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" episode from the American animated anthology TV series Festival of Family Classics (1972-73).

JM: Not all screen actors were equally good. Some actors might be very inexpressive and lacking in emotion, while others might be too expressive and very over-the-top in their acting style. How did you guys approach the dubbing of such actors? Did you always try to match the acting style on the screen, or did you attempt to improve these actors’ performances through the dubbing?

 

GH: My answer would be a little of both, the primary goal being, above all, to try to adhere as much as possible to the character and to respect the actor who had interpreted it... but of course also to the author’s talent for adapting the dialogue and to the bravura of the dubber. Both were possible, depending on the appropriate case.

The search for the corresponding voice was also the subject of a test (provino in Italian and essai vocal in French). Some dubbing voices made the glory of certain films in which the public never imagined that the lead actor could have a voice of his own! The same voice actor followed him in all his films, as was the case with the ‘voice’ of John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas and all the other world-famous actors. And it was the same in every country... Woe betide any change of voice actor! Some French actors/dubbers often had two or three great American actors assigned to them for years! It’s still the same today.

JM: How much time did it typically take to dub a role? Could a substantial role be dubbed in as little as one day…?

 

GH: Yes. An important role can be dubbed fairly quickly – it all depends on with whom, how and when. For instance, if the actor is recorded on a separate soundtrack, a role can be dubbed in one or two turns of three hours each (one day). It depends above all on the actor’s own bravura. I remember Philippe was asked to go to Paris several times to dub himself for co-production films, and one day of recording alone was enough to get it done.

If there were several dubbers recording at the same time it took longer due to one of us making mistakes along the way, or more rehearsing, and so on… Often, the ELDA or ARA directors had me working alone on a separate soundtrack, to concentrate all the attention on me since I was not working in my own language. In a turn we generally had about 30 loops… which means a lot of dialogue. Sometimes, less loops were scheduled, depending of the category of the film. As a dubbing assistant myself, when I scheduled someone, I would draw up the work plan according that dubber’s abilities (more or less loops).

The time spent also depends on the dubbing director, and if the director of the film was present, or not. In big productions like Ben-Hur, they did of course not rush, and did prestigious work. Same with Fellini. It was also dependent on the budget of the film…

But when well-known actors dub themselves, they are always done on a separate soundtrack, quietly and alone in order to concentrate. So, yes, it is possible to dub an entire good role in not too much time, if you are good enough to do so.

I am reminded of one time when Jean Louis and I were dubbing a long, inextricable scene in an Italian comedy film with Barbara Bouchet and Renzo Montagnani into French. It was a very tightly-written scene in which our quick dialogues were so entangled in each other that the scene couldn’t be cut into loops, and it was impossible to answer or wait for each other’s lines. We just had to each take charge of our own dialogue without even looking at the other. When we felt ready from rehearsing, Jean (who was directing and acting at the same time) said “OK, you’re in... here we go!” and we spouted our dialogues together at rapid fire speed, for Italian comedy films were often based on untranslatable puns and breathtaking tirades. The Italian fonico (sound engineer) behind the glass wall had haggard eyes: “Ma chè... ma chè! Jeanne... Généviévé!... Genvié... Janvier...!” (Our Italian friends could never pronounce our names properly, so Jean became Jeanne (a female name), whereas Janvier (January) was what my name pronounced à la française sounded like to them. It stuck, and Jean would continue to call me ‘Janvier’ for the rest of his life).

We then looked through the scene. First, we watched while paying attention only to Jean’s voice. The second time, we only paid attention to my voice. The third time, we listened to both voices together, and then we watched a fourth time just for the pleasure of the game and the end result. In short, we’d only done one take, but it was the right one! If we’d tried to do it again, we’d have lost some of our naturalness and spontaneity.

Barbara Bouchet and Renzo Montagnani in Perché non facciamo l'amore? (1981), one of several films the popular duo made together, and which may or may not be the film Geneviève remembers dubbing with Jean Louis.

JM: One film in which I’ve found your voice is a horror film called Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1974) starring Rossano Brazzi. You dubbed the voice of film’s leading lady, but I have a suspicion that this film may not have been dubbed in Rome, but in Munich, and the dubbing director may have been Robert H. Oliver. I understand that several Rome dubbers were sometimes sent to dub not only in Munich, but also in Madrid and Barcelona. Were you sent out on many dubbing trips like that, and what are your memories of this?

 

GH: No, it wasn’t me, because I’ve never been to Munich in my life! And I didn’t know that actors/dubbers had been sent abroad to dub. Nor do I know Mr. Robert H. Oliver...

 

JM: In addition to your dubbing work, you also appeared on-screen in an Italian WW2 drama called La linea del fiume (1976) in the role of a French café proprietress. Can you tell us a little about that experience? And was that the only film you appeared in during your years in Rome, or did you do others too?

 

GH: You reminded me of that title... I’d forgotten it! I wasn’t much in demand as an actress in Italy, nor did I want to be, as I was already very busy with journalism, the press, film dubbing and sport, which has always been a big part of my life. In this case, at that time in Rome, and after an intense activity of horse-riding and fencing in Paris, it was tennis that I practiced assiduously with my husband Philippe, a very good player just like me, which meant that I was often absent from the studios (Shh! It’s a little secret)!

It was through tennis that I was able to ‘tame’ the great American actor Charlton Heston, the star of Ben-Hur (1959), who was an enthusiast of the sport, traveling with his racket wherever he went to shoot on location for his films, and who, as soon as he arrived somewhere, would ask where the tennis courts were! This gave me the opportunity to interview him at length for Cinémonde in his beautiful villa on Rome’s Via Appia Antica (The Appian Way) during the shooting of the film about the painter Michelangelo, whom he played in the fine film The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).

At the same time, I was covering the ‘Internazionali di Tennis’ at the Foro Italico in Rome (the International Tennis Championships, equivalent of the ‘Championnats Internationaux de Tennis’ at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris), where I went with my Foreign Press Card to watch the game and where I rubbed shoulders with the best champions from all over the world, whom I interviewed for a Californian newspaper. I saw the debut of a tall young man with ‘gazelle legs’ (as the Italians nicknamed him): Yannick Noah... and I saw all the world’s greatest players!

Geneviève and Philippe Hersent playing tennis in Rome circa 1980. From Geneviève's personal collection.

JM: Interestingly, there is an erotic film called Laure (1976) starring the French actress Annie Belle and her romantic partner at the time, Al Cliver. Among the actors listed in the end titles, we see the names Geneviève Gerald (the name you used during your acting days in Paris) as well as those of your French dubbing colleagues Gérard Landry and Martial Bresson. However, I couldn’t find you anywhere in this film, nor could I find Gérard Landry. Maybe some scenes are missing? Do you remember if you appeared in this film?

 

The mysterious Geneviève Gerald credit from the film Laure.

GH: No, I never made a porno/erotic film in my life. The credit of my name is a big mistake. I should have attacked the production for that and filed a lawsuit! I learned several years later that the charming Annie Belle had worked on this kind of pictures.

But I probably dubbed it, that’s possible, and also Gérard Landry and Martial Bresson, and this resulted in the confusion in the credits. I don’t know what to say…!

I worked in Italy as an actress (and not a dubber) only in La linea del fiume as I told you, nothing else. Otherwise, I just did dubbing. But I did dub porno films several times, mostly with the Italian company.

In France, I made four good films where I had nice roles: Les révoltés de Lomanach (1954) starring Dany Robin and Georges Marchal, and Barbe-Bleue (1951), shot in both a French language version with actor Pierre Brasseur, and a German language version with actor Hans Albers. I was one of the wives of Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard) – the Scottish one, on horseback, and speaking in English.

The other two were Les cow-boys de Paris (1948), a court métrage (short film) with my husband Philippe, on horseback in Paris and around, and Le duel à travers les âges (1952), a very interesting film telling the story of arms (weapons) since the Stone Age and up to now! Philippe was also the conseiller technique (the technical adviser/consultant) for all the duels and fights in the film, and I played a very famous ‘half woman/half man’ called Mademoiselle de la Maupin and was in almost all the fights with the other men – stuntmen. I wore a little beard and moustache!

Geneviève as Mademoiselle de la Maupin in the film Le duel à travers les âges. From Geneviève's personal collection.

Geneviève on horseback as one of Bluebeard's ill-fated wives in the film Barbe-Bleu.

JM: I understand that very few Italian filmmakers cared about the English language dubbing of their films and did not show up to supervise the sessions. Tinto Brass is one of the few Italian directors who is known to have taken an interest in the English dubbing of his films. You dubbed at least two of his films into English: The Key (1983) and Frivolous Lola (1998), both under the direction of Gene Luotto. Do you remember if Tinto came to any of the dubbing sessions? If so, what are your memories of him?

 

GH: Indeed, I’ve noticed that in general, apart from Federico Fellini, Roman Polanski, Dino Risi... few directors came to see the dubbing of their own films. They probably trusted the dubbing directors, or maybe they weren’t free... I didn’t meet Tinto Brass either.

 

JM: Another director who was known to be involved in the dubbing process was Federico Fellini. I know you dubbed in the Italian versions of some of his films. Do you remember any roles you dubbed for Fellini? And what was he like during the dubbing sessions?

 

GH: Yes, on the other hand, I can speak fervently of Federico Fellini, who used to ask me to take part in all the dubbing of his films. He was a rather gentle and charming man, exquisitely polite, with whom I got on very well, because you had to be flexible to understand and follow his ideas, which were always a little whimsical and unpredictable, and it suited me very well to ‘create’ in his company!

I remember working with him, at Cinecittà, on his film And the Ship Sails On in June 1983 (the dubbing director was the actor Riccardo Cucciolla). Fellini confided in me between takes, saying “Geneviève, sto invecchiando...” (I'm getting old). It was very moving. He had asked me to lend my voice to five different characters in the same film!

Federico Fellini with dubbing actresses Elsa Vazzoler and Livia Giampalmo during the Italian dubbing sessions of Fellini's Casanova (1976).

JM: Can you tell us a little more about some of your English dubbing colleagues? I know that once your work in the sala was done, you were busy with sports and other interests, but maybe you have some memories or anecdotes to share of some of the long-time dubbing veterans like Susan Spafford, Pat Starke, Robert Sommer, Roger Browne John Stacy, Frazier Rippy, Silvia Faver, Ken Belton, Edward Mannix etc.?

 

GH: Apart from Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca, whom I had known even before I began dubbing, I didn’t spend much time with other English-speaking dubbers, as I was very busy keeping up with my many commitments on both sides... with French dubbing first of all, and also doing voice-overs in many prestigious documentaries for RAI, Istituto Luce, Folco Quilici, Luciano Emmer, Bruno Vailati, Maestro Nascimbene for the Son et Lumières (Sound and Light) permanently on air at the Greek Theatre in Taormina, Sicily, for Transworld, Editions Lancio, the Cannes Festival, FAO, for the Italian Ministry of Public Education for French lessons in Italian schools, not to mention my participation as a dubbing assistant sometimes, or as a French coach for dialogues, my work as a journalist, translator, interpreter, and also sport, which has always played a big part in my life, in this case in Rome, as I said, tennis, my husband’s and my passion. We didn’t socialize with anyone outside the dubbing studios, filming locations and tennis courts!

 

JM: Can we take a little moment to talk about the French dubbing group in Rome? Unlike the English group, this group seems to have consisted of a lot of very experienced film actors. How did this dubbing team get started, and were you and your husband involved from the start?

 

GH: In fact, my husband Philippe and I were the first to dub a film in French for Lux Film, for which we hired Edwige Fenech and Jacques Sernas. Lux knew me well, because as a journalist, I had written some very fine reports for them on their films in progress and on their actresses, such as Franca Bettoja, Alessandra Panaro, Monica Vitti, and above all the ‘debutante’ Claudia Cardinale. They gave me nice presents at the end of the year, as they did to all the Rome Correspondents of foreign newspapers. In my case, it was for the magazine Cinémonde, or the corporate journal of cinema exhibitors and producers La Cinématographie Française. As their partner was the Galbani Company, I often received a large cheese platter!

But our French dubbing group really took shape and consistency when Jean Louis (a very fine actor who himself appeared in many films) started to handle the whole thing, with a real talent for dialogue adaptations, for directing actors and as interpreter/dubber of many leading roles. He was the beautiful voice of many prestigious actors of the time who were filming in Italy, he was our protagonista par excellence, and he dubbed, like me, a number of composition roles, changing his voice (he particularly excelled in the roles of little funny old geezers in westerns)! Hey, hey, hey...!

 

French dubbing actor/adaptor/director Jean Louis, here in a scene from the film May God Forgive You, I Won't (1968).

Several other small groups had formed here and there, such as Guy Gibert, who came from Canada and then moved to Belgium, producer Paolo Moffa, who wanted to dub his own films himself, and Pierre Richard (a homonym of the more famous actor of the same name), who dubbed the films of French producer Jacques Leitienne. But everywhere, we were always the same small group of actors/dubbers, and these improvised groups gradually disbanded.

It has to be said that the main French dubbing group, known for its fine work, was undoubtedly the one formed by Jean Louis, who brought actors in from Paris to dub themselves or to fill a voice gap matching the actor on screen. Jean was a meticulous, scrupulous and talented professional.

It was after Annie Alberti-Landry, who was his assistant for a few years, that I also did that job. Jean entrusted me with the task of recruiting all sorts of different voices for him, and I sometimes went so far as to ask foreign embassies if they had anyone capable of acting in French with a local accent, for example to dub Turks in a long-running 52-episode German TV series called Der Fahnder, which was released on French television on the channel La Cinq, then on France 2, under the title L’Enquêteur in the years 1996-97 or thereabouts.

Jean Louis and I were considered by everyone to be the two pillars of dubbing, and in three languages, capable of changing voices, writing the texts of the speakers (voice-overs) of prestigious documentaries or commercials, and reading them in record time. He, too, dubbed in English and Italian, but less so than I, as he didn't have the time for it, except for voice-overs which he would record during the lunch break, between two rounds of French dubbing, without even taking the time to eat.

Little did I know then that, many years later, life would bring us together in a relationship of life and heart, me being a widow and him separated, and that I would lovingly and painfully assist this lifelong friend until his last moments, at the end of 2020... until his last breath of life. Salut Jeannot!

Jean Louis and Geneviève in 2019. From Geneviève's personal collection.

JM: Jacques Stany was a regular member of your French dubbing group, but he sometimes also dubbed in English when someone with an authentic French accent was needed. How do you remember Jacques?

 

Jacques Stany.

GH: Our dear Jacques Stany was a very good friend even outside of dubbing. He had an irresistible sense of humor and was often invited to parties given by our mutual friend, the actress Gaby André (Andreux in her early career in France). Jacques had often been told that his looks and sense of humor were reminiscent of the great American comedian of the time, Danny Kaye, whose sketches Jacques often reprised for social occasions. He also did Jerry Lewis sketches (like the famous one about the typewriter), and was a big hit. He also loved to discreetly snatch people’s watches off their wrists and then return them to everyone’s amazement. He was a jolly fellow who spoke English very well, who joked all the time and who dubbed back and forth in several languages as he spoke a lot of them, being of Russian or Eastern European origin. His real name, if I’m not mistaken, was Stanislawski...

He wrote a few dialogue adaptations for Jean Louis, but his verve was sometimes a little heavy-handed and had to be reworked.

Stricken with cancer, he lived bravely with his illness and even knew how to joke about it, but I think it must have caught up with him a few years after I left Rome. I never saw him again...

 

JM: Were there any other members of your French dubbing team that would sometimes dub in English? And vice versa: were there any of the American or British dubbers that used to come and do French dubbing with you?

 

GH: As I said, our lead actor/dubbing director, Jean Louis, had also been asked to dub with the American dubbing teams, with brilliance, but he didn’t have the time to agree to go as an actor because his schedule was so full that he was swamped with tasks and in the evenings, when he left the tiny, stuffy office with the noisy moviola where he was adapting the dialogues, all he wanted to do was let off steam with his handsome, athletic body by going for a run in a large nearby park, followed by his inseparable little female dog Tusha (pronounced Toucha), who was always there, following him everywhere and even taking part in the brusio (the recording of crowd voices)! The Italians christened Jean quello alto con il cagnolino (the tall guy with the little dog).

Jean Louis in Rome in the 1970s. From Geneviève's personal collection.

JM: You continued to work with dubbing even through the 1990s when this work (at least in English) was starting to dry up. Why and when did you finally decide to call it quits and leave Rome behind, and can you tell us a little about what you have been doing in the years since?

 

GH: It was quite natural that one day I decided to return to my native country and go back to France. International dubbing was beginning to decline across the board. Films in the original version had become the preferred choice, the great Hollywood actors living in Italy had returned to their homeland, and a whole generation of dubbers was beginning to die out. The homecoming was almost self-evident. The Italian dubbing teams continued to call me back for a year or two... then the times changed and people became more interested in video games, computer innovation, and electronic…nic, nic, nic!

I didn’t lose out and even started, once again: a new life! A new activity that encompassed everything my various gifts had enabled me to do. It was following an exceptional encounter with Dr. Jacques Vigne (an ex-French psychiatrist living in India, as I explained at the beginning) that I began to follow him on his spirituality retreats, conferences, training courses, teaching practice, and even on a first trip to India, where he had been living for some twenty years already.

It was a life experience that called everything into question...

Hence the title of my second and penultimate book Du cinéma... à la spiritualité (Editions du Petit Véhicule – Nantes, 2022) written in collaboration with Gilles Ermia.

 

Geneviève and Dr. Jacques Vigne in India in 2004. From Geneviève's personal collection.

I’ve had the opportunity to write three books in all on this subject: the first was Voyage intérieur aux sources de la joie following my return from India (Editions du Petit Véhicule – Nantes, 2015) and the third Jacques Vigne, une vie de passeur... Entre l’Orient et l’Occident (Editions Ovadia – Nice, 2022). A book about his life’s motivations, his childhood, his Hindu and Buddhist teachings, his travels, testimonies, bibliography, all ‘as seen by his assistant’ with even a touch of humor!

I’ve illustrated each of the three books with around a hundred previously unpublished photos taken during my travels.

After the many sports I had practiced in Paris and Rome (ballet, horse-riding, fencing, tennis, swimming...) it was the spirit of yoga that took over, in my head and in my body, as the years went by.

This spiritual encounter with Jacques Vigne (Vigyânânanda) was such an intense upheaval in my life that I naturally became his volunteer assistant, and still am after 20 years of loyal service (seva in Sanskrit).

I help him organize his courses, conferences and seminars by scheduling them on his sites, I accompany him in his proofreading and editing of the countless books and texts of which he is the indefatigable author (18 books already published by Albin Michel or Le Relié), I collaborate in the coordination of his videoconferences by Zoom and then I handle the correspondence when necessary.

Jacques also bequeathed me a sacred task, that of continuing to compose, still on a voluntary basis, a small quarterly spirituality brochure (called Jay Ma) in homage to a great wise woman of India: Ma Anandamayee, a brochure which was created almost 40 years ago in India and which I have the deep inner joy of being able to continue to bring to life.

I also draw a lot of portraits of the great Masters using a sanguine process. What better way to keep your brain cool? I enjoy doing it as a gift of myself to end my life by helping others...

Geneviève with her book Jacques Vigne, une vie de passeur... Entre l'Orient et l'Occident.

The portrait of Jacques Vigne used on the cover of book Jacques Vigne, une vie de passeur... Entre l'Orient et l'Occident was painted by Geneviève herself in 2003.