Bruce Johansen

 

Bruce Johansen is a former dubbing actor and adaptor who was active on the English dubbing scene in Paris. His career only lasted from the mid-1960s until the early 1970s, but during the course of those years, Bruce was extremely prolific and he can be heard as the voice of handsome young leading men, supporting parts and narrators in hundreds of French, Italian, German, Russian etc films dubbed into English in Paris. Like a lot of Parisian dubbers, Bruce was also frequently called to Rome for dubbing jobs, so if you’re a fan of European cinema of this vintage, chances are you’ll have heard Bruce’s warm, pleasant voice on many occasions. Below you can watch a video featuring some samples of his Parisian dubbing work (note that you may have to click to view it on YouTube):

 

Bruce grew up in the San Francisco Bay area before heading off to Antioch College, Ohio, where he studied music and theater for two years. He then went on to study at the San Francisco State University, graduating with a B.A. in radio and TV communications in 1962. Bruce’s first jobs were with the radio stations KSFR FM and KDFC FM in San Francisco, and KCRA in Sacramento, but before long, one of Bruce’s friends decided to go to Paris for a year to learn French and asked him to come along. Excited by the idea, Bruce readily agreed, and so it was that he made his arrival in Paris, circa 1965.

At the time, he didn’t speak any French, but having worked as a radio announcer while in college, Bruce managed to land a job at the state-owned French broadcasting organization ORTF, where he did English audio dramas destined for export to US radio stations to promote French culture. From there, the step into film dubbing was short, and Bruce quickly became a favorite with the Parisian dubbing directors, who picked him to dub such handsome young European actors like Jacques Perrin, Nino Castelnuovo, Michel Duchaussoy, Roger Van Hool, Lou Castel, Julián Mateos and even the famed singer Johnny Hallyday.

 

Bruce dubbed the voice of Jacques Perrin for the dialogue scenes of Jacques Demy's famous musical The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Perrin's singing voice was dubbed by Earl Brown.

 

Bruce dubbed the voice of Johnny Hallyday in the French-Italian spaghetti western The Specialists (1969).

Thanks to his breakthrough as a dubber, Bruce was able to live comfortably in Paris, and his intended one-year stay was extended to six years, during which time he worked very intensely with dubbing.

“I worked almost every day,” Bruce recalled when Rémi Caremel of the Dans l’ombre des studios blog and I had the pleasure of sitting down with him for a chat on Zoom. “I tell people it was a period of my life when, on the weekends, I couldn’t wait to get back in the studio on Monday. I mean, I loved it so much, and it was easy for me. You know, for some people it’s easy and for some people it’s very difficult. Some very talented actors can’t do it. It’s confining, and I just happened to have a knack for it.”

During his six years in Paris, Bruce dubbed hundreds of movies into English, most of which are a blur in his head, but one film he vividly remembers working on is Claude Lelouch’s famous romantic drama A Man and a Woman (1966), which was a massive international success, winning such prestigious awards as the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Bruce dubbed the voice of the male lead, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and is rightfully proud of his work on the film. The female lead, Anouk Aimée, dubbed her own voice for the English version, and rather than be single-tracked, which was the common practice for name stars dubbing themselves, Aimée actually recorded her lines together with Bruce.

“We got along really well,” Bruce recalled. “And it was good, because there was a certain energy we developed that reflected the energy between her and Trintignant.”

 

Bruce provided the voice of Jean-Louis Trintignant the English version of A Man and a Woman, whereas Anouk Aimée dubbed herself. Bruce also dubbed Trintignant in the thriller The Sleeping Car Murder (1965).

 

Check out the video below for a small sample of Bruce dubbing Jean-Louis Trintignant for the English version of A Man and a Woman:

 

 

In the video above, you’ll notice that much of the dialogue is actually spoken as a voice over narration representing the character’s thoughts. This is something that Bruce’s warm, measured and easily flowing voice was particularly suited for, and he was subsequently cast in a number of narrator roles, for example in documentaries, but also in films where the main character intermittently narrates in voice over. One such film was the Danish production Quiet Days in Clichy (1970), in which Bruce dubs the leading role of Joey (played by Paul Valjean), who also narrates portions of the film. Bruce’s excellent voice work here is a major contribution to the film – so much so that he actually received an on-screen credit, which was basically unheard of for English dubbing in those days.

 

Bruce received a rare on-screen dubbing credit for his work as the voice of Joey (Paul Valjean) in Quiet Days in Clichy.

  

Nearly all of the English dubbers in Paris in the 1960s were actors who in addition to dubbing work also appeared in English language stage plays at the Studio Theater of Paris, founded by Gordon Heath, or played small parts in movies. Bruce, however, did neither. “I never considered myself an actor, really. I just did the dubbing. That’s all I did,” he explained to Rémi Caremel and me.

Nevertheless, Bruce did appear in three productions for French television. The first one was Quand la liberté venait du ciel (1967), a 13-part WW2 series in which Bruce appears in two episodes as an American paratrooper. He next played a small guest role in “Gastronomie”, an episode of the crime-comedy series Agence Intérim (1969), and finally a major role in “À Montparnasse”, an episode of the docu-fiction series Les quartiers de Paris (1967-71), devoted to Parisian neighborhoods. These three productions were Bruce’s only on-screen acting roles.

 

 

Bruce as an American paratrooper in Quand la liberté venait du ciel (1967).

Bruce in the TV series Agence Intérim, episode "Gastronomie" (1969).

Bruce in the TV series Les quartiers de Paris, episode "À Montparnasse" (1971).

In addition to his work in Paris, Bruce also did quite a bit of dubbing in Rome with Lewis E. Ciannelli, who was one of the major Roman dubbing directors going back all the way to the early 1950s. Ciannelli was friends with Parisian dubbing director Richard Heinz, and one time when Ciannelli was struggling to find the right voice for a role, Heinz organized an audition of several actors at his studio in Paris, and Bruce ended up winning the role. Subsequently, Ciannelli had Bruce flown to Rome on many occasions, and he ended up dubbing his share of Italian crime, giallo and western films. He was sometimes also farmed out to other dubbing hubs, such as London, where he did some work for Jesse and Carol Vogel, who’d had their dubbing company in Paris before eventually relocating to London.

Check out the video below for a few examples of some of Bruce’s dubbing work in Rome:

 

 

Bruce preferred working in Paris, however, as he was extremely appreciative of rhythm band system used for dubbing there. This was a system that he grew intimately familiar with during his years in Paris, because in addition to dubbing voices, Bruce also became a seasoned hand at adapting and writing dubbing scripts. Many of these adaptations were done in collaboration with French actress Jacqueline Porel, who was a major dubbing actress, translator and director for French language dubbing, but due to her excellent command of English, she also ended up heavily involved in the English dubbing scene.

“I remember it was great working with Jacqueline Porel”, Bruce told me, “because I’m the native English speaker and she’s the native French speaker, and between us we would come up with something that would make sense, but if you were a French person, for example, trying to do that, you might come up with something that didn’t make a lot of sense. So, it was good to have a collaboration with people speaking both languages.”

 

Bruce's frequent dubbing collaborator Jacqueline Porel (1918-2012), seen here in a 1968 television documentary about French dubbing.

 

The early 1970s saw the end of Bruce’s Parisian days, however. Dubbing was starting to slow down a bit, and Bruce was turning 30 and decided it was time to move back to the US and build a career for himself. He thus left dubbing behind and instead became vice president and general manager of KBSC-TV, one of the Kaiser Broadcasting stations. He later joined Multimedia Entertainment as a sales executive and ended up being made head of international sales for programs such as Phil Donahue, Sally Jessy Raphael and Jerry Springer. In 1992, Bruce was elected president and CEO of the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), a world-wide trade association representing executives in the production, distribution and marketing of television programming, and remained in that position until finally retiring in 2003.

 

Bruce in 2002, during his time as president and CEO of NATPE.

 

Today, Bruce lives in Palm Springs, where he’s enjoying his retirement years together with his husband Tommy. Bruce is an avid opera enthusiast and devotes much of his time to this passion, and even serves on the board of the Palm Springs Opera Guild. He also has a house in the southwest of France, near Toulouse, where he and Tommy spend the summer months, with frequent visits to the Toulouse opera house.

Unfortunately, the general lack of availability of English dubs of French films means that a lot of Bruce’s dubbing work is difficult to find, but I’ve compiled a dubbing filmography below, and I hope to soon be able to update it with even more roles. In the meantime, make sure to also check out the interview Rémi Caremel and I did with Bruce.

 

 

English dubbing filmography (Paris):

 

- The Sleeping Car Murder (1965) - voice of Éric Grandin (Jean-Louis Trintignant)

- Attack and Retreat (1964; dubbed in 1966) - voice of Bazzocchi (Lev Prygunov)

- Kill Johnny Ringo! (1966) - voice of Ray Scott (Nino Fuscagni)

- A Man and a Woman (1966) - voice of Jean-Louis Duroc (Jean-Louis Trintignant)

- Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy - Part 1 (1966) - voice of Gernot (Fred Williams)

- Bomb at Ten:Ten (1967) - voice of Marko (Rade Marković) *

- Oscar (1967) - voice of Christian Martin (Claude Rich)

- The Tiger and the Pussycat (1967) - voice of Luca Vincenzini (Giovambattista Salerno)

- Who’s Got the Black Box?! (1967) - voice of Josio (Paolo Giusti)

- Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy - Part 2 (1967) - voice of Gernot (Fred Williams)

- The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) - voice of Maxence (Jacques Perrin)

- The Bride Wore Black (1968) - voice of Bliss (Claude Rich)

- Come Play with Me (1968) - voice of Alvise (Lou Castel)

- Death in a Red Jaguar (1968) - voice of Harry Crawford (Frank Nossack)

- The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968) - voice of Bruno (Michel Duchaussoy)

- Heartbeat (1968) - voice of Antoine (Roger Van Hool)

- Through Fire, Water and... Brass Pipes (1968) - voice of Vasya (Aleksei Katyshev)

- Tower of Screaming Virgins (1968) - voice of Philippe d’Aunay (Balázs Kosztolányi)

- Vengeance for Vengeance (1968) - voice of Jeb (Ivan Giovanni Scratuglia)

- What a Way to Die! (1968) - voice of Kurt Sandweg (Helmut Förnbacher)

- Diary of a Telephone Operator (1969) - voice of Piero (Nino Castelnuovo)

- Murder by Music (1969) - voice of Richard Milford (Brett Halsey)

- School of Fear (1969) - voice of Kurrat (Arthur Richelmann)

- Should a Schoolgirl Tell? (1969) - voice of Ulli (Ronald Nitschke)

- The Specialists (1969) - voice of Hud (Johnny Hallyday)

- The Strangers (1969) - voice of Kaine (Julián Mateos)

- The Swingin’ Pussycats (1969) - voice of Philoni (Wilfried Herbst)

- Chariots of the Gods (1970) - voice of Co-Narrator

- Children of Mata-Hari (1970) - voice of Gianni (Angelo Infanti)

- The Modification (1970) - voice of Léon Delmont (Maurice Ronet)

- The Murderer Strikes at Dawn (1970) - voice of Dr. Eric Caulder (Jean-Claude Bouillon)

- Quiet Days in Clichy (1970) - voice of Joey (Paul Valjean)

 

* This was actually dubbed in Belgrade, but it is for all intents and purposes a Paris dub since it was recorded by a crew of Parisian dubbers. 

 

 

English dubbing filmography (Rome):

 

- Assassination (1967) - voice of Bob (Fred Beir)

- The Adventures of Ulysses (1968) - voice of Telemachus (Renaud Verley)

- Deadly Inheritance (1968) - voice of Jules (Isarco Ravaioli)

- Fenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen (1968) - voice of Count Guy Norton (Nicola Mauro Parenti)

- The Ruthless Four (1968) - voice of Manolo Sanchez (George Hilton)

- A Woman on Fire (1969) - voice of Giancarlo (Gianni Macchia)

- A Wrong Way to Love (1969) - voice of Carlo (Gianni Macchia)

- Death Occurred Last Night (1970) - voice of Mascaranti (Gabriele Tinti)

- Violent City (1970) - voice of Steve (Umberto Orsini)

 

 

English dubbing filmography (London):

 

- Mark of the Devil (1970) - voice of Count Christian von Meruh (Udo Kier)

 

 

Animation dubbing (Paris):

 

- Asterix the Gaul (1967) - voice of Narrator

- Asterix and Cleopatra (1968) - voice of Narrator