Linda Gary

If you have a passion for English language voice acting, you’ll most likely be familiar with Linda Gary (1944-1995), for she was one of the top names in American animation dubbing during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, famous above all as being the voice of all the major female characters in the popular animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983-85), but she was also featured in countless other animated films and series from Filmation, Hanna-Barbera, Disney and Marvel, as well as in radio series, video games and audio books. Not many are aware, however, that Linda actually began illustrious voice acting career in Rome, dubbing live action features while she was living there from 1970 to 1974. If watching an Italian giallo, horror, western or Eurocrime from that time period, chances are it’ll feature Linda’s seductively beautiful voice as her incredible range and versatility made her one of the most prolific and in-demand English dubbing actresses in Rome. Check out the video below for some samples of Linda’s memorable dubbing work from her Rome days:

Linda was born on November 4, 1944 in Los Angeles, California, and according to the biographical piece on her in Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records (2006) by Tim Hollis and Greg Ehbar, she started her acting career already as a child, with Linda’s mother, a Russian immigrant, getting her involved in theater and early television. As a young girl, she appeared on such TV shows as Mickey Mouse Club, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and Playhouse 90 under the names of Linda Gay or Linda DeWoskin, and even had uncredited parts in the epic Hollywood dramas The Silver Chalice (1954) and The Ten Commandments (1956).

After attending the University of California at Northridge and doing a bit of modeling in New York, Linda then returned to Los Angeles to do a play at Northridge, and there she met the great love of her life: the handsome actor Charles Howerton, to whom she was married in 1967.

 

Charles Howerton, Linda's husband.

 

In 1970, Charles and Linda visited Europe and after several months of travelling around the continent, they found themselves in Rome with no money in their pockets. There, they were discovered by actor, director and prolific dubber Mel Welles, who quickly got them started in the English dubbing business, prompting the young couple to settle in Rome.

“In Rome, there was a nucleus of American actors who dubbed films,” Linda recalled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in March 1987. “We both began to get work right away. Six or seven people would cover all the parts in one film. So I was playing not only the young lead and the heroine, but I was the mother, the grandmother and the child.”

A bit of an exaggeration as the talent pool of English dubbers in Rome was definitely large enough that most of the parts were usually covered by unique voices, but the more versatile dubbers did indeed often get cast for more than one major part, and in fact, one of the earliest films Linda dubbed in Rome, under the direction of Nick Alexander, was the popular spaghetti western Compañeros (1970) in which Linda provides the voices of two distinctly different characters: a Mexican revolutionary played by Iris Berben and a sexy saloon madam played by Karin Schubert.

 

In Compañeros, Linda dubbed the voice of Iris Berben as Lola...

...as well as the voice of Karin Schubert as Zaira.

“Linda was an instant hit because she had such range. That’s when she discovered her talent for voice-overs,” husband Charles Howerton recalled in the Mouse Tracks book, and Linda was indeed much in demand not only for straight female leads, but also for young ingénues, seductive femme fatales, villainesses or comedy roles – with or without accents. Regardless of role, she performed every voice role with bravura, infusing the parts with such life and sexiness that she became popular not only with the dubbing directors, but according to Charles, there were also many Italian actresses who specifically asked for Linda to do their voices in English. Consequently, Linda dubbed many of the sexiest Italian starlets of the 1970s, including Rosalba Neri, Edwige Fenech, Barbara Bouchet, Laura Antonelli, Agostina Belli, Sylva Koscina, Erica Blanc, Femi Benussi, Zeudi Araya and Ewa Aulin.

 

Mel Welles picked Linda to dub the voice of Rosalba Neri in his horror film Lady Frankenstein (1971), and she also dubbed Rosalba again in the western The Great Treasure Hunt (1972) and the giallo Girl in Room 2A (1973).

Edwige Fenech was dubbed by Linda in the giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972) and in the Eurocrime film Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1973).

Agonstina Belli was dubbed by Linda in the horror film The Night of the Devils (1972) and in the Eurocrime film I Kiss the Hand (1973).

Below are three videos I’ve put together of Linda’s dubbing work in different genres. This one features some of her giallo and horror voice work:

This second video features some clips of Linda’s Eurocrime dubbing roles:

And this video features some examples of her spaghetti western voice roles:

While in Rome, Charles, too, did a lot of English dubbing work, as well as writing several dubbing adaptations, and both he and Linda appeared in commercials and minor parts in films. For example, Linda has uncredited bit parts in Dino Risi’s In the Name of the Italian People (1971), where she can be seen in a few scenes as Vittorio Gassman’s secretary, and in Federico Fellini’s Roma (1972).

Linda as the bespectacled secretary of Vittorio Gassman in In the Name of the Italian People (1971).

In 1974, however, Linda and Charles’ dubbing days in Rome came to an end as they packed their bags and returned to Los Angeles in hopes of continuing their careers there. Unfortunately, it soon turned out that while their work in Rome had been great training, it didn’t count for much when the couple tried to find work. “We had to start from scratch,” Linda revealed in the 1987 Los Angeles Times interview.

Whereas Charles began to score supporting roles in low-budget B-movies like The Black Gestapo (1975) and some guest spots on TV shows, the 5-foot-9 Linda was convinced that her future career was voice work rather than on-screen acting. “Height is a problem for actresses, unless you’re really beautiful or unless you’re really a character type. I was in-between. So there was never a lot of work for me,” she explained in the 1987 interview.

She thus began to do voice lessons with Daws Butler, who had created the voices of such famous cartoon characters as Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, and then Linda and Charles both got a big break thanks to Mel Welles, their friend and dubbing colleague from Rome, who had also returned to Los Angeles. Welles had just managed to land the job of dubbing the Japanese sci-fi superhero TV series Spectreman (1971-72) into English, and he hired Charles as well as Ruth Carter (another former dubbing colleague from Rome) to help him write an English adaptation.

All 63 episodes of the Spectreman series, which deals with a super-cyborg who defends Earth from mutated pollution monsters created by evil alien invaders, were dubbed into English in Los Angeles around 1977/78, and in addition to Charles, Linda and Mel Welles himself, the dubbing cast also included three other former Rome dubbers: Rodd Dana, Dan Sturkie and John Thompson.

Linda in the late 1970s.

Spectreman.

Mel Welles, Linda and Charles' good friend and dubbing colleague in both Rome and Los Angeles.

 

Originally, Linda provided the voice of Rita (played by Machiko Konishi), the sole female member of the regular cast, but she departed the series after just twelve episodes and was subsequently replaced by no less than three further characters who came and went with bewildering frequency – and all of them were dubbed by Linda, who also dubbed a number of episodes characters of all ages. All in all, the series was a terrific showcase for Linda’s talents and abilities.

Rita (Machiko Konishi) was the original female lead of Spectreman for the first twelve episodes and was dubbed into English by Linda.

Margaret (Naoko Shin) was the first replacement for Rita and appeared in episodes 17 to 35. She, too, was dubbed by Linda.

Sally (Rumi Goto), also dubbed by Linda, was only around for episodes 36 to 39.

Kim (Taeko Sakurai) was the fourth and final Spectreman heroine. She joined in episode 40 and remained until the 63rd and final episode. Like the previous three female leads, she too was dubbed by Linda.

Below is a video featuring a selection of some of Linda’s numerous dubbing roles in Spectreman:

Mel Welles also hired both Charles and Linda to play small on-screen parts in his exploitation film Joyride to Nowhere (1977) about two teenage runaways, and she later played a tiny role in the car chase film Smokey Bites the Dust (1981) but that was one of the last times Linda appeared on the screen, as she preferred to focus all of her efforts on voice work.

 

Linda as a chatty boutique owner in Joyride to Nowhere (1977).

Charles Howerton as a sheriff in Joyride to Nowhere. He and Linda do not physically appear together, but they're in the same scene, speaking to each other on the phone.

Linda playing a sheriff in Smokey Bites the Dust (1981).

Around this time, Linda’s voice acting career began to take off. On radio, she starred in the well-received sci fi series Alien Worlds (1979-80), and on television she began to voice characters in animated series produced by Filmation Studios such as Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle (1976-79), Space Sentinels (1977) and Blackstar (1981). And it was for Filmation that she did the series for which she is arguably best remembered: the massively popular He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983-85) where she provided the voices of all the four central female characters: Teela, Queen Marlena, the Sorceress of Greyskull Castle and the villainous Evil-Lyn, as well as numerous one-off characters.

 

In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Linda was the voice of (clockwise from top left) Teela, Evil-Lyn, Queen Marlena and The Sorceress.

 

Linda also worked on the spin-off series She-Ra: Princess of Power (1985-87), and on that series, too, she voiced a number of different regular characters.

“In animation, you have to do two or three roles. Linda wound up doing five to seven,” husband Charles remarked in the Mouse Tracks book. “She was 90 percent of the female characters. There were many times when even I didn’t know it was her, she was so good at changing her tone and pitch.”

The fact that she got to tackle such a wide variety of different roles – from sweet-sounding princesses to evil, cackling witches and everything in between – was one of the main reasons Linda preferred doing voice acting. “It gives me more opportunity to play different characters that I wouldn’t ordinarily be cast for, such as a Gracie Allen character or an old woman or a witch. Or a short, cute pixie,” she explained in the 1987 Los Angeles Times interview, adding that actors have “a freedom in voice-over that you wouldn’t have on camera. First of all, no one really knows who you are, so you have more room to experiment.”

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Linda also voiced guest or recurring characters in such well-known animated series as The Smurfs and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo for Hanna-Barbera, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, DuckTales, Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin and The Little Mermaid for Disney, The Transformers and G.I. Joe for Sunbow/Marvel, and Batman: The Animated Series for Warner Bros. Animation. She also did several animated feature films, including Universal Cartoon Studios’ The Land Before Time sequels, in which she was the voice of Grandma Longneck, voiced multiple characters in the computer adventure games King’s Quest VI and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, and even did read-along storybooks of everything from Disney classics to Star Trek.

In terms of live action voice work, Linda provided the female voice of God in the Blake Edwards fantasy comedy film Switch (1991) starring Ellen Barkin and Jimmy Smits. It’s also likely that she sometimes also dubbed actresses in foreign films into English like she had done in Rome, but currently there are no known examples of this.

Switch (1991).

Linda always took her work very seriously, and in the Los Angeles Times interview she explained that she usually received the scripts ahead of time so that she could practice and develop suitable voices for the characters she’d be voicing. Often, she would practice in what she referred to as her ‘private studio’ – her car, in which she had cassettes of accents and of different characters.

She was also not above getting physically into the character while in the dubbing studio, including shriveling herself into the form of a sputtering, gravelly-voiced witch in order to get the feel of being a witch. “You have to have some empathy with the character you’re playing to make them real,” she explained in the Los Angeles Times interview. “When you’re doing a character, especially a cartoon, your body has to move, your face has to move, you have to contort yourself into what that character is doing.”

This photo of Linda at work in a North Hollywood dubbing studio accompanies her interview published in the Los Angeles Times on March 12, 1987.

From 1994 to 1995, Linda voiced the regular role of Aunt May in Marvel Productions’ animated Spider-Man TV series, which sadly, would prove to be her final performance. She died of brain cancer on October 5, 1995 at her North Hollywood home, just a month shy of her 51st birthday, and was survived by her husband Charles, their daughters Dana and Alexis, and her brother Paul. An extraordinarily talented actress, taken away much too soon, but her legacy lives on as she left behind an incredible body of work, much of which is surely still just waiting to be discovered. Linda has been rightly hailed for her superlative voice for in animation, and I hope this post will bring more recognition to the great and unjustly forgotten dubbing work she did during her years in Rome, too.

 

Linda during her later years.

 

Linda's final role as the voice of Aunt May in the Spider-Man TV series (1994-95).

The dubbing filmography I’ve compiled below is limited to Linda’s live action dubbing roles and is, as always, a work in progress, and I’ll add more roles as soon as I discover them.

 

 

Dubbing filmography:

 

- Star Pilot (1966; dubbed in the early 1970s) - voice of Luisa Solmi (Leontine Snell)

- Blood Calls to Blood (1968; dubbed in the early 1970s) - voice of Mary Ann (Lea Nanni)

- Crime Story (1968; dubbed in the early 1970s) - voice of Sonia (Aurora De Alba)

- Compañeros (1970) - voice of Lola (Iris Berben) and Zaira (Karin Schubert)

- A Barrel Full of Dollars (1971) - voice of Monica (Simone Blondell)

- A Bay of Blood (1971) - voice of Renata (Claudine Auger)

- Black Killer (1971) - voice of Consuelo (Tiziana Dini)

- Bubu (1971) - voice of Berta (Ottavia Piccolo)

- The Day of Judgement (1971) - voice of Prairie Flower (Edda Di Benedetto)

- Django’s Cut Price Corpses (1971) - voice of Dolores (Angela Portaluri)

- Excuse Me, My Name is... Rocco Papaleo (1971) - voice of Jenny (Lauren Hutton)

- The Eye of the Spider (1971) - voice of Gloria (Lucretia Love)

- Four Candles for Garringo (1971) - voice of Elaine Farley (Olga Omar)

- Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) - voice of Maria (Laura Troschel)

- Graveyard of Horror (1971) - voice of Lady Anne (Catherine Ellison)

- Hands Up, Dead Man! You’re Under Arrest (1971) - voice of Nora Carson (Mary Zanandrea)

- His Name Was King (1971) - voice of Carol Marley (Anne Puskin)

- His Name Was Sam Wallash (1971) - voice of Fanny (Simone Blondell)

- Lady Frankenstein (1971) - voice of Tania Frankenstein (Rosalba Neri)

- Lobo the Bastard (1971) - voice of Mexican Girl (Daniela Giordano)

- The Lovers of the Great Bear (1971) - voice of Leonie (Nicoletta Machiavelli)

- The Naked Cello (1971) - voice of Costanza Vivaldi (Laura Antonelli)

- Paid in Blood (1971) - voice of Cora (Krista Nell)

- Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead (1971) - voice of Marietta (Anna Zinnemann)

- They Still Call Me Trinity (1971) - voice of Perla (Yanti Somer)

- Vendetta at Dawn (1971) - voice of Laurie Baxter (Laura Troschel)

- Amuck (1972) - voice of Greta Franklin (Barbara Bouchet)

- The Big Bust-Out (1972) - voice of Claire (Patrizia Barbot)

- Black Turin (1972) - voice of Nascarella (Maria Baxa)

- The Boldest Job in the West (1972) - voice of Sophie (Barbara Carroll)

- A Bounty Killer for Trinity (1972) - voice of Carmen (Tiziana Dini) and Saloon Girl (Carla Mancini)

- Cut-Throats Nine (1972) - voice of Cathy Brown (Emma Cohen)

- Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972) - voice of Amira (Geneviève Deloir)

- Execution Squad (1972) - voice of Sandra (Mariangela Melato)

- The Federal Man (1972) - voice of Lola (Monica Randall)

- God is My Colt (1972) - voice of Mary (Krista Nell)

- The Great Treasure Hunt (1972) - voice of Agnes (Rosalba Neri)

- Hallelujah and Sartana Strike Again (1972) - voice of Gertrude (Wanda Vismara)

- Hector the Mighty (1972) - voice of Helen (Rosanna Schiaffino)

- His Name Was Holy Ghost (1972) - voice of Juana Mendoza (Pilar Velazquez)

- The Lady in Red Kills Seven Times (1972) - voice of Rosemary Müller (Pia Giancaro)

- The Last Decameron – Adultery in 7 Easy Lessons (1972) - voice of The Jealous Husband’s Wife (Marina Malfatti)

- Life is Tough, Eh Providence? (1972) - voice of Stella (Janet Agren)

- The Long Arm of the Godfather (1972) - voice of Sabina (Erika Blanc)

- Moonskin Girl (1972) - voice of Simone (Zeudi Araya)

- More Sexy Canterbury Tales (1972) - voice of Tonia (Enza Sbordone)

- The Murder Mansion (1972) - voice of Laura (Anna Lisa Nardi)

- Naked Girl Killed in Park... (1972) - voice of Barbara Wallenberger (Patrizia Adiutori)

- The Night of the Devils (1972) - voice of Sdenka (Agostina Belli)

- The Night of the Scorpion (1972) - voice of Jenny (Teresa Gimpera)

- The Other Canterbury Tales (1972) - voice of Mino’s Wife (Leonora Vivaldi)

- Put Your Devil Into My Hell (1972) - voice of Violante (Melinda Pillon)

- The Return of Clint the Stranger (1972) - voice of Norma (Marina Malfatti)

- The Ribald Decameron (1972) - voice of Mother Lucrezia (Malisa Longo)

- Run Men! Eldorado is Coming to Trinity (1972) - voice of Juanita (Daniela Giordano)

- Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972) - voice of Giulia Torresi (Uschi Glas)

- So Sweet, So Dead (1972) - voice of Barbara Capuana (Sylva Koscina)

- Tales of Erotica (1972) - voice of Eugenia (Shirley Corrigan)

- They Called Him Amen (1972) - voice of Dorothy (Sydne Rome)

- They Called Him Veritas (1972) - voice of Paquita (Maria D’Incoronato)

- Trinity & Sartana... Those Dirty Sons o’ B-s (1972) - voice of Martha (Daniela Giordano)

- The Valachi Papers (1972) - voice of Donna (Maria Baxa)

- What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) - voice of Elizabeth Seccles (Cristina Galbo)

- You’re Jinxed, Friend, You’ve Met Sacramento (1972) - voice of Maggie Thompson (Jenny Atkins)

- Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972) - voice of Floriana (Edwige Fenech)

- The Arena (1973) - voice of Mamawi (Pam Grier)

- Battle of the Amazons (1973) - voice of Eraclea (Lucretia Love)

- The Black Hand (1973) - voice of Mary (Annie Carol Edel)

- The Counsellor (1973) - voice of Dorothy (Perla Cristal)

- Death Smiles at Murder (1973) - voice of Greta von Holstein (Ewa Aulin)

- The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973) - voice of Tania (Enza Sbordone)

- Dirty Weekend (1973) - voice of Sylvia (Nicoletta Machiavelli)

- Even Angels Eat Beans (1973) - voice of Salvation Army Lady (Francy Fair)

- The Executioner of God (1973) - voice of Carol (Nuccia Cardinali)

- The Funny Face of the Godfather (1973) - voice of Rosalia (Dada Gallotti)

- Gang War in Milan (1973) - voice of Virginia (Carla Romanelli)

- Girl in Room 2A (1973) - voice of Alicia Songberg (Rosalba Neri)

- God Help Us! Here Comes the Passatore (1973) - voice of Zaira (Helga Liné)

- Helen, Yes... Helen of Troy (1973) - voice of Helen (Christa Linder)

- I Kiss the Hand (1973) - voice of Mariuccia Ferrante (Agostina Belli)

- Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1973) - voice of Orchidea (Edwige Fenech)

- The Return of the Evil Dead (1973) - voice of Monica (Loreta Tovar)

- Revolver (1973) - voice of Carlotta (Paola Pitagora)

- Special Killers (1973) - voice of Laura Damiani (Femi Benussi)

- Tales of Canterbury (1973) - voice of Carlotta (Patrizia Adiutori)

- Spectreman (TV series, 1971-72; dubbed in 1978) - voice of Rita (Machiko Konishi), Margaret (Naoko Shin), Sally (Rumi Goto), Kim (Taeko Sakurai) and various others