My talks with Roger Browne

Since I began to actively research the English dubbing scene in Rome, I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with several former dubbers, and one of the people I got to know the best was Roger Browne (1930-2024). Roger lived in Rome from 1960 to 1980 and enjoyed a highly successful film career with starring roles in numerous Italian peplum and Eurospy films, but throughout his 20 years in the Eternal City, he was also a prolific dubber and even served as president of the English dubbing union ELDA for several years.

When the Italian film industry began to dwindle in the late 1970s, Roger returned to the US, settling with his family in Burbank, California, where he embarked on a new career path as a physical therapist. After around 30 years in that field, he retired in 2012 and made a surprise comeback to the limelight through regular appearances in the YouTube series Elder Reacts and roles in independent films, as well as participating in the convention circuit and actively communicating with fans through social media.

I first got to know Roger in March 2023, when his long-time friend and former dubbing colleague Rodd Dana helped put us in touch. At the time, Roger was 92 and not in the best of health, but his mind was still as sharp as a tack, and even though he repeatedly told me that he had learned much more from me than I was ever going to learn from him, the fact of the matter is that I had the privilege of learning a great deal of invaluable dubbing history from Roger. Having been around for the entirety of the golden age of English dubbing in Rome and served as president of ELDA for several years, Roger had unique insight into the scene, and once we started strolling down memory lane, I think even Roger himself was surprised by how much he was able to remember – about the evolvement and inner workings of the dubbing business, the working methods, the films, and of course his many colorful dubbing colleagues.

 

Roger during his Eurospy days in the 1960s.

 

Roger and I stayed in frequent touch via email for more than a year, and throughout that period, I not only got to hear a great many fascinating stories about dubbing, but I also got to know and greatly appreciate the man himself. Always cheerful and eager to help, Roger had a wonderful sense of humor, and almost every email from him came with a funny joke, or a wry observation or pun.

The last email I received from Roger was in June 2024. After that, I didn’t hear any more from him until in October, when his daughter Kelsey wrote to inform me that Roger had quietly passed away with all of his loved ones by his side. I was greatly saddened by this news, but took comfort in the fact that Roger made it to the very respectable age of 94 and knowing that he lived each of those 94 years to the fullest.

Now, a year and a half later, I find that I still miss emailing with Roger. I miss his jokes and not being able to run things by him whenever I happen across some new dubbing related information, but I’m also immensely grateful that I got the chance to know him and learn so much from him. Altogether, I received hundreds of emails from him, and I have incorporated much of the information he gave me into various articles I have published on the blog. But there are so many, many more of Roger’s great dubbing recollections I want to preserve for posterity, and so I have decided to publish our full correspondence here as a dedication to Roger and his career.

In doing so, however, I have had to take a few little liberties with the material to make it more presentable. Due to various troubles with his iPad, Roger’s email responses were often rather choppy, with him sending a reply to one thing I’d written, and then addressing the rest at a later time. As a result of this, thus our conversations frequently jumped from one thing to another and then back again later on. It was also not unusual that Roger would recount a story, and then later on tell the same story again but this time with several additional details that he had since recalled. There are therefore various instances where I have combined Roger’s answers to be able to present the most detailed account, and I have also re-arranged the order of the topics we discussed in order to give the conversation a better sense of flow and continuity. Additionally, I have corrected spelling where necessary, done some editing for context and clarity, and also left out a few parts which I deemed to be either irrelevant or too personal to include.

If you haven’t already, then I strongly recommend that you check out the career-spanning interview Roger did with the Cool Ass Cinema blog back in 2018. It’s a terrific interview that covers his film career in fascinating detail, and I think my correspondence with Roger serves as a good companion piece to it. Obviously, our talks focused largely on Roger’s dubbing career and his memories of his various dubbing colleagues, but we did also touch on some of his film work and other obscure and forgotten jobs he did to put money on the table, as well as his romance with Edwige Fenech. So, without any further ado, I present my talks with Roger from 2023-24 and hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

 

Johan Melle: Hello, and thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me, Roger. Or… is it Bill? I notice some of your old friends, like Rodd Dana, refer to you as Bill Browne. Tell me what you prefer.

 

Roger Browne: Hi Johan. I use Roger since early days in Rome. Emimmo Salvi, the director of Vulcan, Son of Jove (1962), wanted more clout, so he made me change my name. Rogers is my middle name. I wish I had kept the ‘s’. But how can I help you? I’ll do the best I can.

 

JM: Well, first of all, can you help me to identify your real voice? I’ve not been able to positively identify it, because you were dubbed by other actors in quite a few of the Italian films you made. Do you happen to remember some of the films where you dubbed yourself?

 

RB: One problem could be that some Rome-dubbed films may have been re-dubbed elsewhere by another buyer or distributor. I dubbed Terence Hill in about ten films in Rome and once in New York, but one or more may have been re-dubbed. Who knows? I would have to see and hear it. In The Fantastic Argoman (1967) I know it’s my own voice in this country because the distributor, Dorado Films, brought me to Portland for a festival of some of their films.

 

Roger's most famous starring role was as the title character in the pulpy superhero flick The Fantastic Argoman (1967).

 

JM: You were the president of the English Language Dubbers Association (ELDA) for several years. Through old newspaper archives, I’ve discovered that something called the Anglo-American Dubbing Association was started in Rome in October 1949 by Gisella Mathews and Valentino Bruchi. I’m thinking this is what eventually evolved into ELDA later in the 1950s. All of this was long before you arrived, but I was just wondering if maybe you knew any details about the history of the organization. Who were the ELDA originals, and how did it all get started?

 

RB: I have already learned from you more than you will learn from me! Never heard that English dubbing started in 1949! I do remember Gisella Mathews, older English lady and sala assistant. Valentino Bruchi, I remember the name, but don’t know what he did. I always thought that ELDA started in the late 1950s with a few actors like Sebastian Cabot, Frank Latimore, some English teachers and opera students, and Steve Garrett and Frank Gregory, a writer who held some acting classes. This is tough – I was 30 then, 92 now.

 

JM: If I understand correctly, then you arrived in Rome around 1960. At the time, I think Mike Billingsley was the president of ELDA…?

 

RB: ELDA president was Bill Kiehl, fringe actor with a deep voice – did Steve Reeves, Reg Park etc. He dubbed with his hands on his buttocks. Better his than mine!

Mike Billingsley was secretary, but ELDA was actually run by his wife Rhoda from her kitchen table, assisting directors, casting and holding auditions – and she had four little girls to take care of, too! It was not legal until 1975. Then we had to start paying taxes and make contributions to Italian social security.

 

JM: ELDA was not legal until 1975? So that was when it became Associated Recording Artists (ARA), then? Was there any specific reason behind the name change?

 

RB: ELDA in those days, until 1975, was flying under the radar, so to speak, not legal, not paying taxes nor having money contributed towards our retirement. In the early 60s we did get better organized, had a little office and two employees: Danilo to count all lines dubbed and send out bills, and Chris to man the phone, assist the directors in casting their films, and make work and payment calls to the dubbers.

But it was not all easy; I got mugged once coming from the bank with payroll, something that Frank von Kuegelgen, our treasurer, should have been doing, but he was busy writing adaptations and directing dubbing and I wasn’t generally all that busy. Everyone got paid anyway, from funds that we had built up.

ELDA was also mugged from the inside by an accountant we hired on the recommendation of one of our members. Cost us several thousand dollars, but we couldn’t do anything because we were not yet legal.

When we finally got ARA established, and too bad it wasn’t in 1949 when English dubbing started, we wanted to eliminate all traces of ELDA to avoid a paper trail of unreported income. We changed offices. ELDA mail was not forwarded but picked up by our two-person staff who remained. I was out and I don’t remember if we continued with offices but Frank von Kuegelgen and Leslie La Penna took more active roles. I regret not having the 15 years from 1960 to 1975 count towards my retirement income. But that was life in Roma!

 

[Note: Although Roger remembered the shift from ELDA to ARA as occurring in 1975, subsequent research has indicated that the shift actually came about three years later, in 1978.]

 

ELDA often received a credit in the English opening titles. Here from The Last of the Vikings (1961).

 

JM: Can you do a little rundown of the many great dubbers who were active on the Roman scene during the 1960s and 70s?

 

RB: So many people from that era have passed on. One director was Ted Rusoff, who always used his favorite dubber on leads… himself! Sometimes I got a bone. But we were friends. He was married to Carolyn de Fonseca, good actress, dubber and sala assistant.

Frank Latimore did a lot of leads in the early 1960s; I last saw him on Patton (1970), which I was also in uncredited along with Mel Gaines, another actor dubber. Dan Sturkie was good and worked a lot after we got him off pills. Ed Mannix, a writer, and Bob Sommer, opera singer, were both good dubbers. Mike Forest was a good friend, actor and dubber. We played a lot of tennis together, as did I with Frank Wolff, and with Larry Dolgin. Tony Russo was president of ELDA for a while and was often busy filming.

The busiest female dubber was probably Susan Mueller, actress who did not act. May have had a fling with Ugo Tognazzi. Other leading female dubbers were Linda Gary; Jodean Russo, Tony’s wife; and Peggy Nelson. Sally Amarù was another girl who was good, pushed by John Fonseca, writer and sala assistant. Another was Joan Rowe, who Ted Rusoff had a fling with before marrying Carolyn, or maybe even after. Silvia Faver was English and good. Uti Hof was German, accented. I used her when I translated, wrote and directed many episodes of the cartoon Calimero (1970) for a fellow from Milano.

English actors who worked for us were John Stacy, Roland Bartrop, John Steiner, even Edmund Purdom a bit. And Charles Borromel, who was Scottish – good actor, bit of a flake.

Meyer Glickman directed the dubbing of Dustin Hoffman’s Alfredo, Alfredo (1972). Other directors were Gino Bardi, Lew Ciannelli, Bob Spafford (who married Susan Mueller), Dick McNamara and Gene Luotto, one of the best – did all the Terence Hill and Bud Spencer films. Gene and Lew cast honestly and that’s why they got the best films.

Gene did his funny little accented characters and he was good. Mel Welles did older guys. Curt Lowens did Nazis. Nona Medici did older women… maybe in more ways than one. Other older femmes who dubbed were Gisella Mathews, Cicely Browne, Louise Lambert and Irene Guest, a singer.

Some others were Jay Riley, wild man entertainer – Afro. Chrystel Dane was on the fringe. Also Shirley Herbert – tiny voice. Yvonne Pizzini was a young voice. Chuck Howerton dubbed me in The Black Hand (1973) with Lionel Stander, with whom I beat Ty Hardin and his partner at tennis. Ty was an asshole. No extra charge for that.

Carol Danell is another name I remember. Which reminds me of Sylvia Daneel, a Polish actress who worked at the Polish embassy in Rome and did some dubbing.

Frank Gregory, writer, was a nice man – roomed with Frank Latimore. Camilla Trinchieri was a good sala assistant, worked with Lew Ciannelli. Gene’s little cousin, Clementina, was the sala assistant on his films.

I left Rome in July 1980, so anything after that I know nothing. The market for English dubbed films dwindled in the 1980s and I think ARA closed the office and was handled at home by Frank von Kuegelgen and Leslie La Penna.

 

JM: How did you first end up working with dubbing? Was there an auditioning process to go through for roles?

 

RB: When I first got to Rome, I found The Daily American, local rag. The paper had an article about dubbing and ELDA and a number to call. Spoke with Rhoda Billingsley, after filming It Happened in Athens [shot in 1960; released in 1962], and she put me in Two Women (1960) for crowd noises – a group of American soldiers marching and singing. Sophia Loren won the Oscar for that film in 1961.

Directors sometimes auditioned for roles if they weren’t sure who to use, or if there were new people they hadn’t heard.

 

JM: I realize that most of these films were dubbed fairly quickly one after another, but do you have any specific memories of other films or actors that you dubbed?

 

RB: My first real dubbing job was a Hercules film with Reg Park [Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961)]. Bill Kiehl with the six-ball voice dubbed Reg, Frank Latimore did the second lead, and then I did Luciano Marin.

George Higgins gave me my first lead, dubbing Guy Stockwell, brother of the more famous Dean.

I usually did actors around my age, 30 to 40-45. I did Giuliano Gemma once. I did Tom Skerritt. Brad Harris. Richard Harrison.

Rodd Dana and I dubbed a film for Mark Savage [One Night at Dinner, a.k.a. Love Circle (1969)]. Rodd did Jean-Louis Trintignant and I did Lino Capolicchio with sort of an androgynous accent. Fun stuff. Johan, the things you are making me remember!

I also did quite a bit of Italian dubbing when they needed foreigners speaking Italian. One nice gig was dubbing John Phillip Law in the Nino Manfredi episode in Alta infedeltà (1964). I played him as being a little light in the loafers. They seemed to like it and I realized I was speaking Italian quite well if I could speak, act, and sync in it.

 

Roger got his first dubbing break as the voice of Luciano Marin in Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961).

 

Lino Capolicchio in One Night at Dinner (1969), one of the few individual roles Roger remembered having dubbed, but unfortunately, the English dub is currently not available anywhere.

Roger dubbed John Phillip Law in Italian (but with an American accent) in Alta infedeltà (1964). The film was also released in English under the title High Infidelity.

 

JM: Guy Stockwell was the first lead you dubbed? In Three Swords for Zorro (1963), I presume?

 

RB: Johan, you are a font of information! Of course Three Swords for Zorro! I have these things written down someplace, but since my wife died my interest in things has waned. Interestingly enough I had Guy Stockwell as a patient years later while working as a physical therapist right here in Burbank. He didn’t like to hear that I had dubbed him. They never do. Terence Hill was offended that he had to be dubbed, but he would have sounded funny with his Peter Lorre voice. It never bothered me being dubbed. I was glad someone got a gig.

Dubbing was a strange bird. I usually dubbed guys like me, 6 ft 175/180 who could move. Maybe not act, but that’s where dubbing often saved the film. Worst film I ever did was The Three Centurions (1964). My English script was terrible! I decided to do it in Italian and let the Italian dubbers deal with it. I doubted it would ever be sold for English distribution. Ralph Zucker, a little a-hole distributor, got it and didn’t even call me to dub myself, which I couldn’t care less about because he wouldn’t have paid me. So I think he got Frank Latimore, who he had to pay.

 

JM: Did actors never get paid extra to dub themselves?

 

RB: Actors on my level dubbing themselves generally do not get paid unless they have a separate deal with the producer or buyer. Lew Cianelli, who dubbed The Fantastic Argoman made sure I got paid since he had used me many times and we were good friends. Thanks to Ralph Zucker, who was NOT a friend, he told me I should be paid double for Terence Hill for the many times I dubbed him. Gene Luotto just worked it into the preventivo.

 

JM: So when people like Lee Van Cleef, Joseph Cotten, Carroll Baker etc. came to dub themselves, they basically just did it for the sake of their own performance then? Would explain why actors sometimes didn’t bother to do their own dubbing. When the American stars came to dub themselves, did they sometimes do this alongside the rest of the dubbing cast? Or were they always single-tracked...?

 

RB: Known actors were always single-tracked to finish their obligation and save the producer on per diem, which was not cheap. Only one I ever met single-tracking was Edward G. Robinson being done by Lew Ciannelli. Lew had called me to do a few loops on Argoman one evening, but plans changed to do Mr. Robinson instead. I was happy to oblige. Lew was a good friend. Same thing happened to me when I was producing a little commercial at Cinecittà. My afternoon time for a sala was taken away from me to give to Federico Fellini.

 

JM: Can you tell me a little more about Lewis Ciannelli? I know he was one of the ELDA old-timers who was involved in dubbing since way back in the 1950s. Did he often dub voices in addition to writing/directing?

 

RB: Lew Ciannelli did go way back! I remember seeing a film he directed, O.K. Nero, in San Francisco before 1955. He grew up in Beverly Hills. His father was Eduardo Ciannelli, character actor. Lew had kind of a whiny voice. Don’t think he did much dubbing. Worked in production before dubbing, and gave Marlon Brando a bottle of whiskey during his film Sayonara (1957). Went to Beverly Hills High School with Rhonda Fleming and said guys used to follow her, just feeling where she went.

 

JM: And George Higgins, who picked you to dub Guy Stockwell, was also one of the real old-timers, no?

 

RB: George Higgins was one of the early ELDA members, yes. He adopted an Italian lad named Tommy. That raised a few eyebrows!

 

JM: Why did that raise eyebrows?

 

RB: If a single man adopts a young boy, or girl, it could arouse suspicions that he may have ulterior motives. Not saying that was in George’s case. He was well liked and was secretary of ELDA at one point. I and my then girlfriend from London used to meet him at the horse show and had a lot of laughs making rude remarks. I often wonder whatever happened to him. He ended up falling on hard times and had to move to an impoverished area outside of Rome in the 1970s, and I think he eventually went back to the US – NY or Boston. Dubbing and filming was slowing down. My wife and I were already planning on moving back to the States, which we did in July 1980. I got out just at the right time. I had my 20 years of work, making me eligible when I turned 60 for Italian Social Security. Our son Roman (what else?) was born there in 1979, which we always appreciated!

 

Prolific and popular dubbing director George Higgins, who also dubbed a lot of character parts.

 

JM: Now, you mentioned that you translated, wrote and directed the English dubbing of the cartoon series Calimero. I did not realize you used to write and direct dubbing. Did you do that much? And did you do any of the roles in Calimero yourself?

 

RB: I did very little writing and directing. Only Calimero and a couple of small commercials – Tic Tac was one. I didn’t do anything in Calimero – not really a cartoon voice guy. And I was making enough writing and directing and wanted my friends and colleagues to get a share.

 

JM: What are your memories of Uti Hof, the German actress you picked to do the voice of Calimero?

 

RB: Uti Hof was perfect as Calimero with her cute little accent. The producer loved it – Signor Palermo from Milano, or vice versa. Uti must have gone with Bob Mathias in Rome because she had a son who looked like Bob would have at ten years old. A friend from It Happened in Athens, he barely remembered any of his athletic achievements, but every date he ever had was no problem – who, how or when.

Uti later moved to Utah and married a Mormon. She wrote back to our office secretary Chris Selheim, who misunderstood and told everybody that Uti married a “moron”.

 

Altogether, Roger adapted and directed the English dubbing of 52 shorts about the famous black chicken Calimero during 1970-71.

 

German actress Uti Hof, whom Roger chose to be the English voice of Calimero.

 

 

JM: For Calimero, you also cast Cicely Browne as Calimero’s mother, and Rodd Dana as Calimero’s nemesis, Peter Duck. Do you remember who else you used?

 

RB: Funny, you know more about how I cast Calimero than I do! I only remember Uti, Dan Sturkie, maybe Ed Mannix, and Charles Borromel, who I owed. Gene Luotto was good at doing funny little squeaky types and I should have used him, but I doubt he would have accepted. He was always busy.

Calimero fell in my lap. I just happened to be in the office when the producer from Milano called and Chris put him on to me. I told him I would send him a list of our current directors. He said he was in a hurry to get started, the loops were cut, and since I spoke such good Italian why didn’t I do the translation/adaption and direction? I said gladly. I had only directed two small commercials before.

 

JM: I also noticed the excellent character dubber Michael Tor voicing a couple of characters in Calimero. He was another of the ELDA old-timers. Do you remember anything about him?

 

RB: I never got to know him too well. He was an art lover, and I heard some of his art came out of WWI. At one point, some people proposed him for president of ELDA. That would have never worked! He was not a man of the people, a bit prissy. He and Gino Bardi directed some, and Gino once called Michael ‘Lady Windermere’ for using a fan.

 

JM: Tony Russel was president of ELDA before you. Did you know him and his wife Jodean well?

 

RB: I guess Tony, a friend, was president while I was busy making films during 1963-1968 and wasn’t available to dub much. Jodean was flaky. She, Tony and I played golf, and she farted on Tony’s backswing. Tony went home to do Dinner Theater with Eve Arden and settled in Las Vegas. I spoke with him by phone before he died.

 

JM: I read an interview with Tony where he stated that when he arrived on the scene, there were different dubbing organizations and that they were all competing for the same work, and cutting each other’s throats by dubbing for less and less. He said that when he was president of ELDA, he was eventually able to get them to all unite under the ELDA banner. How was the situation when you arrived? Were there competing organizations at that point, and did they each have dubbers working exclusively for them? If so, which group did you belong to?

 

RB: Around 1965/66 there was ELDA, and there was a splinter group led by Dick McNamara. I actually dropped out of ELDA because I felt I wasn’t being used enough. I had done some big parts but it stopped because of Bob Spafford who, being from California and knowing I was from Kentucky, thought he detected certain Southernisms. I called Dick and he assured me that I would be in all his films, and he was busy. Then there was a movement to get everybody into ELDA. Dan Sturkie was instrumental being a top dubber. Dick begrudgingly came along; he would then have to compete with top directors for films. But production went up, as well as quality of work. Many gained, but some of the marginals like Jack Gillen and Ian Danby lost ground as well as newbies, people just off the boat. We had a strong list of people.

 

Richard McNamara, one of Rome's most prolific English dubbing directors and character dubbers.

 

JM: This certainly helps to explain why so many of the dubs directed by Dick McNamara during the early to mid-1960s always feature the same group of dubbers. Cicely Browne, Robert Sommer and Dan Sturkie did a lot of the leading parts in that group; McNamara himself typically did the heavies; John Stacy and Curt Lowens always did character parts. Do you remember who else was part of that group? There were a couple of female dubbers that were really good, and there was a rather sophisticated-sounding British guy who was very good, too.

 

RB: Sounds like Roland Bartrop, whom I didn’t know well. Nice guy, a bit into himself.

Bob Sommer was a good, close friend, and I rented his apartment twice when he fell on hard times – me and my then girlfriend and her cocker spaniel. Bob was an opera singer, which helped him sync. He was discrete with his, er, social life. Friends were John Hart, George Higgins, Ian Danby and Jack Gillen. Bob I heard went to Florida to live with his sister. By now, who knows?

Dan Sturkie was a good dubber, if a bad smoker. At one point he was so busy doing three dubbing turns a day he got hooked on pills to stay awake. Couldn’t string three words together. Bob and I had to go down and bail him out of a hospital. His wife Carol, an English twit, was no help.

I remember Curt Lowens well in the early 60s. Very Germanic and looked it. Loved his voice. Then he disappeared.

Tamara Lees worked for Dick in the splinter group, too – I do not remember her at ELDA.

 

JM: Jack Gillen is someone I’ve never heard of before. Who was he?

 

RB: Jack was a friend of Bob Sommer. A very marginal dubber who did mostly brusio (crowd noises) – paid very little, but most of us would do it from time to time, especially for directors who normally used us for major parts.

 

JM: You and Dick McNamara also worked together a lot when you dubbed Terence Hill and he dubbed Bud Spencer in the Trinity films and various other Spencer/Hill comedies. For some reason, though, he was later replaced by Ed Mannix and Bob Sommer as the voice of Bud. But that was in the late 1970s when you were no longer doing Terence Hill's voice as his English had become good enough that he was allowed to dub himself.

 

RB: Yes, Dick McNamara dubbed Bud Spencer many times, except when Dino De Laurentiis called me to New York to dub Hill. They should have called Dick, too. His slow Southern drawl was just right. Dick and I were friendly if not friends and I thought he was spot on for Bud. What happened to the last few films of that duo I’ll never know. I was busy getting ready to leave and come back here for chiropractic college. Whoever picked Ed Mannix and Bob Sommer, both good friends, were mistaken.

Terence Hill was good, great with stunts and did funny stuff. He spoke good English, being German, but with a tiny, whiny Peter Lorre-type accent. But he was a big name and he could have said “You want me, you have to let me voice myself in the English version”.

Funny story about Dick. Linda Gary and I were doing a scene, with Dick directing. On playback we heard a jingling, and Dick was beside himself trying to figure out what it was. Turns out it was he himself jingling coins in his pocket, nervous Nellie that he was. Linda and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

Dick had two close-ups, no lines, in Patton (1970). I had no close-ups and one line, which was cut. A paid holiday in Spain.

 

Famous superstar Terence Hill, whose voice Roger dubbed into English in the two Trinity films, ...All the Way, Boys! (1972) and others.

Although Roger didn't recall in which film he had dubbed Terence Hill's voice in New York, I've determined it to be Two Missionaries (1974).

 

JM: Once you all united under the ELDA banner, was there any more English dubbing going on outside of ELDA then? It’s my understanding that two gents named Bob Fiz and Charles Marshall were doing some dubbing work at a studio called De Fazio in the 1970s, and I think they must have been operating outside of ELDA.

 

RB: I am not familiar with those two names nor De Fazio studio. ELDA functioned as a union, assuring established rates for work done. If a Fiz or a Marshall brought us a film to dub and paid our rates, fine. But if they grabbed people off the streets and offered them peanuts, they have guaranteed an inferior product which hurts our reputation if they tell their buyer it’s from Rome – makes our people look bad, takes work away from honest, loyal ELDA dubbers, and exploits the poor unsuspecting souls who were grossly underpaid and were possibly told it was ELDA. I could not care less for them! These types were trying to save money, fine, but at the same time undermining people who had been working hard since 1950, to establish a viable organization to benefit a lot of people through the years. The officers like myself, Frank von Kuegelgen, Mike and Rhoda Billingsley, Bill Kiehl, Gisella Mathews and George Higgins received nothing but gas money, which was never cheap in Italy. So I’ll be goddamned if some carpetbagger was going to come in and screw it up! There may have been some monkey business, but very little I bet. People knew and were told in every letter and meeting, at least by me, that anyone who dubbed outside of ELDA and we found out, they were toast!

 

JM: One thing that has always puzzled me is how little continuity there looks to have been in terms of voice casting. Very often an actor has a certain voice in one film, and then another one in the next. Was this simply down to different dubbing directors having different ideas about whose voice fit a certain actor best?

 

RB: Absolutely right. Lack of continuity was because of so many different directors, American but also some English, each having favorites. I was lucky with Gene Luotto and Terence Hill.

Also, the dubbing world was at times like swinging doors. From around 1963-65 through 1968, I was often busy filming, as was also Rodd Dana, Tony Russo, Mike Forest, Frank Wolff, Larry Dolgin maybe, and Frank Latimore early on. So there was a lot of discontinuity, sometimes having to go 2-3 deep to cast. Nick Alexander often pulled in people from wherever. And the Hong Kong Flu eventually shut us down completely in 1969.

 

JM: You mentioned having gone to New York to dub. I understand that many Rome-based dubbers used to go to both Madrid and Barcelona to dub Spanish films. I know there was also a pretty big dubbing scene in Munich and that some of the Rome gang did work there, too. Did you ever go to Spain or Germany to dub? And if so, how was it like to work there compared to in Rome?

 

RB: I went to Madrid twice to dub for Al Santigosa. They work long and late. Marc Smith, good dubber but flaky, and I were walking back to our hotel at midnight when a truck carrying a huge poster of one of my gladiator films passes by. Marc goes crazy, starts running along the truck and pointing at me, shouting: “And here he is right here, reduced to dubbing! How the mighty have fallen!” We had a big laugh!

Bob Oliver brought me to Munich to dub. He had a cute little sala assistant who was gracias with her time after work. I also met a Continental Airlines stewardess who was uninhibited and anxious to see Rome, years before I wed. We took a long train ride through Zurich.

Bob was married to Barbara Marx who had been married to Zeppo Marx and would later marry Frank Sinatra in an outstanding career advancing move as it turned out!

Dubbing in those places was essentially the same as Rome. Only New York was different. They used the ‘Band System’. A broad line starts on the left and slowly moves across the screen and when it disappears, the dubber says his line. I preferred our way, but doing Terence Hill so many times, it was fairly easy. And there was the guide track, which may have been the Italian finished product, often the case in Rome. Adaptation and rehearsal, very important!

 

Alfonso Santigosa, who brought Roger to Madrid to dub, was originally born in Costa Rica, and was an important dubbing director for both Spanish and English language dubbing.

 

 

JM: But did you guys actually have much time for rehearsing with the tight schedules you were on...?

 

RB: Not much rehearsal time, no! You had to hit the ground running. I was not a quick study, but I could read lines and glance back and forth, get the feel and pull it off. About ten years ago, I was called to do an on-camera part in 24 hours, 93 lines, with an English accent, which I am not great at. I said OK if you have cue cards. They did, in the form of an iPad right alongside the camera. Night shoot in Venice. It was a difficult $500, but satisfactory at age 82.

 

JM: Regarding going to Spain to dub... was that organized through ELDA? And did a whole group of you travel there to dub films, or were you just a few who were brought in to dub alongside the local dubbing talent etc.?

 

RB: Spanish dubbing did not go through ELDA per se, but one of Mr. Santigosa’s assistants would call the office to find out who might be available for certain types of roles or role. And Chris would help them choose someone or two and she would give them the phone number. At that point ELDA was out of it. Other than Bob Sommer, and Marc Smith and I together, I know of nobody else who went to Spain. And we were always single-tracked, to get us over there and out quickly, to save on per diem. Never met a Spanish English dubber. It was the same in Munich, too.

 

JM: Do you have any idea of roughly how many films you might have dubbed during your time in Rome?

 

RB: Ha! Funny you should ask! I did exactly 800! I am a bean counter at heart and I documented all my jobs and income from the time I landed in Rome until we left. Dubbing included ELDA, non-ELDA with Dick McNamara, Madrid under Al Santigosa, Munich under Bob Oliver, New York for Terence Hill, and quite a bit of Italian dubbing from 2-3 different companies.

 

JM: Did the dubbing people from Munich, Paris, Madrid etc. also come to Rome to work? Did Bob Oliver dub with you guys in Rome, for example? Because I know he at least directed a film in Italy – a sleazy horror picture named Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1974) featuring Rossano Brazzi, Gordon Mitchell, Edmund Purdom, and produced by Dick Randall. One of the screenwriters on that film is a certain Mark Smith – spelled with a K, but has to be the dubber Marc Smith! Did you know him well? I know he used to work in both Rome and Paris.

 

RB: Bob Oliver, I did know him in Rome, but didn’t know he did a film.

Gordon Mitchell was a good friend.

Edmund Purdom I first met through Carolyn de Fonseca during her wild years. He was a fairly well-known English actor who did some dubbing for English directors like Nick Alexander, Christopher Cruise, maybe John Gayford, when they called him directly. Not real personable, but maybe it was me. I was on a dubbing turn with him, and my wife Jenni spoke with him in the waiting room – don’t think she knew who he was.

Mark Smith was surely Marc, yes. Marc was funny, had a weird sense of humor. Told me a joke about a three-toed sloth that I wish I could remember! He claimed to have known George C. Scott at the University of Missouri. I said “I’ll bet”. When I was on Patton and I met Mr. Scott, I dared to ask him if he remembered Bob Smith, as he was known as in those days. “Oh yeah, quite a character”, he said. “How’s he doing?” I told him I’d give Bob his regards.

Marc moved around a lot. He went to New Zealand, mentioned me to a magazine and that I was married to a Kiwi. We heard this from Jen’s family. I think he finally ended up in England.

 

Prolific Rome, Paris and London dubber Marc Smith.

 

Dubbers from those other places never came down, nor would they have been welcome. We had plenty of talent and the directors auditioned often for major roles. I didn’t get all I went for. Frank Wolff and I were coming home from an audition the night we learned of the JFK assassination. I went to my room in my cheap pensione and listened to the news on my transistor.

Frank was a good friend and we played a lot of tennis. He was a fine actor, worked a lot in big films but seldom dubbed, felt he didn’t need the money. Once when I was home in Louisville, KY I read that he had committed suicide, found in the same bathtub that I had often showered in after tennis. I was alone and cried. He had a lot of demons.

Another dubber suicide was Frazier Rippy.

 

JM: Speaking of which… there’s a really, really good English-accented character dubber who voiced older men (often slimy ones) in hundreds of westerns, peplums and horror films, and whom I’ve been trying for years to identify. Rodd Dana believes he must be Frazier Rippy, but what little information I could find about Frazier suggests that he was American, and the dubber I’m trying to identify sounds British to my ears…

 

RB: That was Frazier, strange and slimy voice. Very nice fellow, though. I’m pretty sure he was American, but with a genteel accent that could have come off as English. Didn’t know him well.

 

JM: What about the Italian dubbing you did? How would you compare that to doing English dubbing?

 

RB: We were much more precise regarding lip sync, labials, et al. Dubbing is a way of life for Italians. All Italian films were dubbed starting from at least post war with cinema realismo, when directors like De Sica and Blasetti cast real people off the street who spoke guttural dialect not understood in all of Italy, then would have them dubbed by film or theater actors so they would be understood universally. Interpretation was more important than lip synchronization. Same for foreign films, which had to be dubbed into Italian. Make the voice seem logical for the actor according to the dubbing director, a vocation in itself.

 

JM: Did you guys use any of the Italian dubbers to dub for you in English if you needed an authentic Italian accent? People like Luciano De Ambrosis, Sergio Graziani, Nando Gazzolo, Maria Pia Di Meo, Rita Savagnone, Vittoria Febbi etc.

 

RB: Again, you have amazed me! Where did you get the names of all these Italian dubbers? I only knew Pino Locchi who dubbed me, and I dubbed in English many that he dubbed in Italian. Ferruccio Amendola dubbed Bud Spencer and that type. Good dubber, bad tennista. Rita Savagnone did many leading ladies. I don’t think we ever used Italian dubbers, very little need. Ted Rusoff could handle Italian accents, or Gene Luotto, or Tony La Penna. I imagine several Italian dubbers have become quite wealthy. Everything gets dubbed!

 

JM: The names? Well, it’s like you said: dubbing is a way of life in Italy. Many of the dubbers enjoy a high status there and are well-known to several movie fans, so it’s not too hard to find information on the subject. Certainly much easier than with English dubbing!

 

RB: That’s the difference: Italian dubbers have status, English dubbers have anonymity. In Italy it’s the actor and the voice. In the English world it’s all one entity!

 

Italian dubber Pino Locchi, who used to dub Roger, and who was also the long-time Italian voice of Terence Hill.

 

JM: What about non-native English speakers, like Uti Hof, that specialized in dubbing European characters? Did you have many like that? I’ve heard that the Swiss actor Paul Muller, who appeared in dozens upon dozens of films in Italy, France etc., also did some dubbing. Any others?

 

RB: Paul Muller, resident Swiss actor in many films. Maybe French dubbing, never heard of him doing English. There was a small group of French actors who worked and may have done French dubbing in Rome, but I cannot vouch to it. Jacques Stany, tall, personable type. Gérard Landry, who I did not know. Jean Louis. Philippe Hersent, flaky tennis player, and his wife Geneviève, who did publicity for Adam West.

There was an American named Paul Mueller who did some adapting and directing. Wore a wig discovered by Clementina Luotto when he was hit by a car.

Nick Alexander’s second wife, Irena, was from one of the Slavic countries, but I don’t think she dubbed. I stopped by their place the day my son was born. We had too much wine!

 

JM: Jacques Stany sometimes did some dubbing in English, too, on characters requiring a French accent. What kind of a guy was he? I know you and he appeared together in Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965) with Gordon Scott, but I don't think you shared much screen time.

And do you remember if any of these French actors sometimes dubbed in English – for parts requiring French accents?

 

RB: Jacques Stany was a tall, nice fellow. Didn’t know him well. He must have worked in Rome on the Hercules film. My scenes were in Palinuro, where I worked bareback on a horse, with a mask covering half my face. Also in Palinuro was Diana Hyland, pretty girl who later went with John Travolta. Later tragically died early from cancer.

Geneviève Hersent may have been cast for English dubbing, but I don’t know. She spoke English quite well. Her husband Philippe was an actor. Geneviève was also a tennis nut, so much so that when she got tennis elbow from over playing, she wanted to play with her left hand. I convinced her that she would only end up with tennis elbow on both sides. Then I started treating her right elbow with exercise and massage.

 

Roger with a mask covering half his face in Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965).

 

Geneviève Hersent at the tennis court with her husband Philippe.

 

 

JM: Do you remember if there were any black actors that used to dub with you guys?

 

RB: Rai Saunders was a black actor dubber who tried to turn himself white. Didn’t work. He was a man with demons, and ended up in the hospital.

Another was Jay Riley, dancer and entertainer. Jay was loved by all! When he entered a room, everyone started laughing and clapping. He told of once that he was dancing across the stage when his G-string broke. Brought down the house. I backed one of his revues and actually got my money back! He was also in one of my films, shot in Switzerland.

I had a magazine cover photo of three dubbers at the loggia: Bob Spafford, Peggy Nelson and a black actor named Hal Frederick. Don’t know if he did much dubbing, but did the day of that photo. I gave it to Susan Mueller Spafford at a dinner that Frank von Kuegelgen organized in honor of me and my family. Nice reunion of many old friends in 2006!

 

Jay 'Flash' Riley, one of the many colorful personalities to have graced the Roman dubbing salas throughout the years.

 

JM: Were many of your old dubbing friends still around when you made that return trip to Rome in 2006?

 

RB: Many of the older dubbers had passed, like Lew, Bob Spafford, Nick early from cancer, and I guess Dick Mac and Cicely. Maybe Michael Tor fanned out. Tony La Penna was living in Ostia at the sea. Others had left, like Rodd, Mike Forest, Dan, George, and Bob Sommer, but there were many there surprisingly. I don’t know how they hung on! Some I feel had money from home. Frank von Kuegelgen said they were doing 10% of what we once did. No longer needed an office; Frank ran it all from home. Said he had a list of dubbers living all over Italy. Don’t know how that worked. His wife Sonia was the breadwinner as an important sala assistant for Italian dubbing, which will never die, and Leslie La Penna, Tony’s son who I know since he was eight, helped out with ARA.

 

JM: Tony La Penna! He had an incredible voice. What are your memories of him? And Leslie I know was very active with English dubbing in the 1980s and 90s. Had he started working with you guys full-time back when you were still there, too?

 

RB: Tony was a neighbor and friend, usually. Great voice, knew how to use it. We worked together a few times.

Once he had a job as a dialogue coach on an Antonio Sabato film about robots [The War of the Robots (1978)]. Production had failed to cast an important role with a lot of dialogue. Tony told them he had it covered. Production was paying 100,000 Lira. Tony called me at 6:00 AM with the story. I told him “Tony, we are friends and neighbors for years, but you insult me with this. But, and only because it is you, I will do it for 300,000 payable at the end of the day. Non-negotiable. Final offer. Don’t call back unless this is a GO.” He called back offering 200,000. I said “Goodnight Tony, you have already fucked up my night’s sleep”, then I hung up. At nine AM the phone rang saying it was a deal and a car was on the way to get me. I worked my ass off all day. Constant line changes and additions. I should have asked for 400,000!

Sig. Sabato did not have the courtesy to introduce himself. I always made it a point to meet everyone I worked with, dubbing or filming. Kid Rock was an asshole in that regard on a music video I did with him. Ian Ogilvy was a gentleman on a Return of the Saint episode! As was Sir Anthony Hopkins on a West World episode I did. He went around the table shaking hands with four card players and made sure everyone had a chair for lunch. He had been knighted by the Queen!

Leslie La Penna was named for Leslie Howard. I don’t know what he did with ARA. Maybe drove his father to work. Tony was not well coordinated. He once broke a finger putting on a high collared sweater. His wife Natalia was strange, had been married before. Gene called her la vedova allegra.

 

Tony La Penna, Roger's long-time neighbor and dubbing colleague.

 

JM: John Gayford told me that he, too, used to do dialogue coaching for films. Was this something that many dubbers did as a side-job?

 

RB: I don’t know of any other dubber who did dialogue coaching other than Tony La Penna. Anything to supplement a precarious at times existence – I would not fault anyone. I once took dialogue down off a Moviola when they needed the dialogue written down from the guide track to write the definitive script. Terrible work! Only did it once. One could hear most anything, whatever one’s native languages was, or even actors reciting numbers!

 

JB: Child and teen dubbers were in short supply it seems. Do you remember who used to do those parts?

 

RB: Not many young and teen dubbers, no. Del Russo, Tony and Jodean’s son. Gene Luotto’s two boys, Andy and Steve. Girls Yvonne Pizzini. And Shirley Herbert, who was not young, nor small, but a tiny voice. Might have been others but I can’t think of them.

 

JM: Shirley Herbert had a tiny voice…? As in high-pitched so that it came off as sounding younger?

 

RB: Don’t think Shirley was an actress. Maybe taught English, but dubbed – small young voice. Maybe did brusio, nothing big. She was still around in 2006.

 

JM: Who would you say were the best directors and/or adapters, and what made them stand out among the rest?

 

RB: I think the best directors/adapters were Gene Luotto and Lew Ciannelli, who were Italo-American and understood what was intended by the original script. I worked for them a lot, especially the Trinity films for Gene. John Hart was an OK adapter, worked for Dick McNamara. Frank von Kuegelgen. Nick Alexander when he didn’t farm it out to a friend. Maybe Ted Rusoff, but he always dubbed his own leads so who knows? John Fonseca adapted well and was a good sala assistant.

 

In Roger's estimation, Lewis Ciannelli (left) and Gene Luotto (right) were by far the best at adapting and directing dubbing.

 

JM: What if an adaptation didn’t turn out so well, and it was impossible to sync the dialogue in the dubbing script to the mouth movements on the screen? I understand that was known to happen. How did you all deal with it?

 

RB: It didn’t happen all that often if the adaptation was good, but if it wasn’t, look right on the big screen. We would put our heads together, spread out across the sala with different angles and try to come up with a solution. It would not have been worth it to have the editor re-cut the film.

 

JM: What about the sync assistants (sala assistants)? Did many of the dubbing directors have a favorite assistant that they used regularly?

 

RB: Many directors used the same sala assistants always. I don’t remember them all, but Gene Luotto was tied to his cousin Clementina, who I think also worked for Paul Mueller when she could. Lew Ciannelli always used Camilla Trinchieri. Bob Spafford had an attractive Italian lady friend who helped him in the sala, can’t think of her name. Peggy Nelson probably worked for him too. Nick Alexander sometimes did it all himself, as did Ted Rusoff. I guess Frank von Kuegelgen used Sonia, his Italian wife. George Higgins may have used Carolyn, they were close. Gino Bardi I worked for once early on but I don’t remember his assistant, or I could not see for all the young boys around him! Christopher Cruise I never worked for; he may have favored English types like himself. He worked me when he charged me a bomb to rent his seaside hovel for two weeks!

 

JM: Did the British dubbing directors often prefer to cast the Brit dubbers then?

 

RB: Maybe Brit directors tended toward Brit dubbers to a fault, but the good directors were honest and did the best work. Eurospy’s were historically British, but Lew covered me on The Fantastic Argoman with someone’s off camera line saying that my American accent was due to my formative years spent in the American West. I bought lunch!

 

JM: That was a nice way of allowing you to do your own voice for the film. There are several of your films where you ended up dubbed by someone else, though, like some of the Eurospy films, and in Karzan, the Jungle Master (1972) where you were dubbed with a British accent by Edmund Purdom.

 

RB: I am honored that Edmund dubbed me! I would never try to pull off a British accent, though I have worked on it over here in acting class. Yes, I was still doing them after my wife passed.

My low-light memory of Karzan was when my then English girlfriend got mad and threw my car keys in the sand down at the beach! I was scrounging around like a beachcomber for an hour trying to find them! I soon lost her! At least she never stole from me, I don’t think!

 

Roger in the cheesy Tarzan knock-off Karzan, the Jungle Master (1972).

 

JM: I think the three most frequently used Brit dubbers, who also worked a lot with you Americans, were Silvia Faver, Ken Belton and John Stacy (though I understand John was originally from Australia). Do you remember many of the other British dubbers of Rome?

 

RB: The three Brits you mentioned were good people and dubbers. I did not know that John Stacy was an Aussie. I saw Silvia at the reunion dinner in 2006. Still grooming dogs. She once lived in the last place I and my wife and son did, me for 15 great years!

Brit dubbers were not many. Edmund Purdom when he wanted. Ken Belton, John Stacy and John Steiner. Charles Borromel; Scottish brogue. Marne Maitland with India accent. Nick Alexander had a terrible voice, doubt he dubbed. Christopher Cruise maybe he did for himself. John Gayford, a friend; specialty voice. Geoffrey Copleston I guess; bullfrog voice. Women, very few. Silvia, and Louise Lambert, maybe Gisella Mathews early on. Maybe Cicely Browne was asked to fake it in a pinch. My wife Jenni was from New Zealand but not an actress, no interest. But she helped me on commercials and Calimero. Colin Webster Watson, a sculptor from New Zealand, may have got in some dubbing. I ran into him in New York when I was dubbing Terence Hill. Sarah Churchill was at his studio.

 

JM: So your wife dubbed some voices in Calimero then?

 

RB: Jenni never dubbed. I did get a couple of lines out of her on a Tic Tac commercial. She typed my Calimero scripts with 50 space lines as per the line count system I devised. Also for my voiceovers which I did quite a few. I enjoyed them, very educational. She helped me with my copious dialogue on The Black Hand (1973). I had a long, hard day of filming that one. Always loved court scenes but they are hard!

 

Roger with this beloved wife Jennifer, who passed away in 2011. Pic from Roger's Facebook page.

 

JM: You developed your own system for counting lines? How did that work? I assume lines were counted because the dubbers were paid by the number of lines they did, but was it always done that way?

 

RB: They started out counting loops, a very loose, inaccurate way of determining just how much a dubber did. Sometimes overpaid, I felt often underpaid. I brought this up to the by-laws committee of which I was a member along with Mike Billingsley and Susan Mueller. I suggested a line count based on a standardized 50 space line, so much per line. I cannot give you all the details at almost 50 years distance. Mike said he couldn’t help, was busy with his sound editing. Susan was busy being a woman. That left me and my ideas, which is what I really wanted anyway. It led to more single-tracking and better utilization of the dubbers’ time, and more money. I presented it to the membership of about 75 dubbers and it was accepted almost unanimously with the exception of two greedy guys who felt that the slight discount of 10% for all lines over 200 was a sellout to the producers. 200 lines seldom happened! We were doing action films, not Eugene O’Neil, Tolstoy, or Ibsen. I spent many nights on it. I guess I am a bean counter at heart. Hence the 800 dubbing jobs.

When we went legal in 1975 that’s when it really paid off for dubbers, having taxes taken out and social security contributions made in each one’s name. People were informed of this and told they should keep track and follow up on other jobs. I don’t know how many did but at least two that we have mentioned did not, much to their regret. I managed to help one when we were there in 2006. I tried to help the other from here but it was too late, too many aliases, not enough fiscal numbers.

 

JM: Interesting to hear that your line counting system led to more single-tracking. Why was that? I know that names actors dubbing themselves used to be single-tracked, but did regular dubbers, too, often work solo rather than in groups then?

 

RB: Our heydays were from around 1964 or 65 to about 1975. We often had two films going at once, I think three at one time. Some of the better older character dubbers like Dan Sturkie, Ed Mannix, Mike Forest may have been single-tracked if they had a lot of lines and were used in both films. It minimized their time on one film to free them for another. Bob Sommer, maybe even Bob Spafford, Tony La Penna, would be busy. Producers liked it because it often cut down on studio costs.

I on Terence Hill and Dick McNamara on Bud Spencer were single-tracked together since so much of our dialogue was with each other. On the other hand, in The Fantastic Argoman I was all over the place with lines with so many different people, fight scenes, running, jumping, looking like a fairy in my tights, so I was single-tracked.

Fringe dubbers also profited by getting multiple lines on some turns that were single-tracked.

Directors and sala assistants learned very quickly how to use the line count to the advantage of both producers and dubbers alike. Chris in the office was very helpful in that she had all the schedules in front of her, knew who was where and when, who was available or not. The studios were, rather are, all over Rome, very few within the walls. Everyone did not have cars. It was five years before I got a VW. I got a bicycle, went everywhere. People used to call me to ask which bus, or buses, to take for various studios since I lived quite central.

Dubbing was a combination of art and science, cooperation and heart, and a smattering of luck thrown in for good measure! There was trial and error until everyone got used to the line count since it was so different from loops, which was haphazard and inaccurate and had people sitting around and being non-productive.

 

JM: Can you tell me a little about the different dubbing studios? I know two of them were International Recording and Fono Roma. What about the others? Were they all similar in how they were equipped, or were there some with better technical equipment where the more important films were done...?

 

RB: You named the two most important dubbing studios. International Recording is where we did Two Women (1960), also The Bible (1966) where I did some grunts for George C. Scott as God, but I did NOT tell him that!

Fono Roma was big, lot of Italian dubbing done there as well as English, Calimero and many others.

Lew Cianelli worked up the street in Via Margutta of Roman Holiday (1953) fame. Also on Via Nomentana not far from Mussolini’s old Villa. Cannot remember a lot of the studio names. Gene Luotto worked at Safa Palatino on the De Laurentiis lot. I was “discovered” by Emimmo Salvi at Nis Studio off Via Tiburtina. Gino Bardi worked near DePaolis studio. Lew also at Cinecittà, where I did a Mongolian Yak Milk commercial in English dubbing, until Federico Fellini commandeered the sala. Who did he think he was? Fellini? Well yeah, I guess he was!

One studio was at Ponte Milvio where I met Miss Moneypenny of James Bond fame. Another one was small but busy near Piazza Euclede, near my apartment.

So they were spread out! It was a challenge to do two or three turns on that many films in one day, it happened when we were cooling!

The salas were generally quite roomy, some even large, like International Recording.

 

Roger, circa mid-1970s.

 

JM: How many dubbers were typically working together in the sala during a session? Was 2-3 the norm, or could you be up to 5 or 6 at the same time? And were the dubbing director and sync assistant right next to you?

 

RB: The fewer people to work with the better. Those not in the next 2-3 loops were sometimes asked to wait outside but be ready. Did not want to have go looking for anyone. Especially when the line count was put in. Time was money. Save the producer studio costs and he will have more money to buy more films… for us to dub! Dubbers would be paid for dubbing, not sitting, and well!

Three at the loggia at the time together started to get crowded but doable in the interest of getting things done as economically as possible. 5-6 at the loggia at the same time would be impossible, each fighting for mike position. Two or three at most could be difficult. And there is the difference in height. Mike Forest at 6ft 3 in working with a shorter woman like Susan Mueller, who was not short, maybe 5ft 4 or 5. The sound engineer would go crazy coming in and out of the sala. Takes time, costs money. We could cheat or compromise just so much. The real pros like Gene and Lew knew what they could get by with, and they did the better films. The Ted Rusoff type, some Nick Alexander, their market not as particular.

The director was with the dubbers, usually just off to the right with a good view of the screen, and the assistant to the left with a smallish table for notes, script and sign-out sheets for the dubbers to assure their pay. The sound engineer was always behind the glass. Directors working alone like Ted and Nick, doing it all, had to sit at the table checking for sync and interpretation at the same time! Lotsa luck on that! Munich and Madrid were essentially the same. New York with the Band System, they were all behind the glass, including Sig. Dino De Laurentiis! Guess he wanted to see what or who he was paying a lot of money for: travel, per diem, double fee. He seemed to be OK.

 

JM: Yeah, I can imagine that the more people together, the more difficult to get everyone to be on time and in sync. Roughly how many takes was usually needed to get the lines down right would you say? Were there any dubbers that were known for being especially quick to get in sync?

 

RB: Number of takes of course varied, but after about the third or fourth one everyone starts to get a little edgy and palms start to sweat. Directors may drop a dubber who is having a problem and do him or her separately just to keep things moving.

Some dubbers memorized better than others, who depended on reading from the script. Singers like Bob Sommer, also Ed Mannix, were quick studies. I needed more time unless the line was short. Susan and Carolyn were both good, too bad they didn’t act more. Carolyn did bits. Susan may have had money from home I felt. She always had a car. I think she must have had something going with Ugo Tognazzi because he asked me if I knew her.

 

JM: I’m curious about Mike Billingsley. What exactly was his job? He’s sometimes listed in the end credits as sound editor. Was he not involved with dubbing voices etc. then?

 

RB: Mike was a sound editor. He took sounds produced by a rumorista [Foley artist] like footsteps, horses’ hooves, door slamming etc, and placed them on the definitive soundtrack for the film. I think he did some dubbing in the late 50s and early 60s, then got into sound. He was not an actor. Maybe he taught English at Shenkers like many others. He had a young voice. Maybe I picked up some of his gigs. He had had a stroke when we were there in 2006 but he and Rhoda were at the reunion dinner.

 

JB: A lot of dubbers also had singing as a side job it seems. Do you remember any that sang – opera or in nightclubs etc.?

 

RB: I saw Bob Sommer at the Rome Opera, bit role. Baritones were sort of squeezed out between tenors and basses, I feel.

Rodd did My Fair Lady in San Francisco. He may know of other dubbers who had singing gigs.

Jay Riley sang with his group, hopefully with his G-String in place!

Irene Guest was essentially an opera singer, I think. She dubbed some, but was never one of the top women like Susan or Carolyn. Not a sweet voice. I guess a Coloratura, as if I knew what that was! She went with Tommy Lo Monaco, a teacher. Rodd worked with him, and I a bit just for fun. Though I was not a singer, Tommy said I had perfect pitch.

Larry Dolgin was a friend of Bill Conti, of Rocky fame, who was working on an advanced music degree in Rome, and several of us helped him record a Gregorian chant, which I don’t think ever made the Hit Parade!

 

[Note: In an email from 2025, Rodd Dana confirmed to me that he, too, was one of the voices featured on this Gregorian chant, and that the recording was directed by John Ireson of The Wilder Brothers.]

 

JB: You sang on a Gregorian chant for Bill Conti!? Wow! Was there anything you didn’t do?

 

RB: How about me in Atlantida, an oratorio by Manuel De Falla at La Scala di Milano in 1962, in the non-singing role of Alcide, i.e. Ercole? Me, action actor from Rome, chosen to work at the greatest opera house in the world! The director was Margarita Wallmann, a tough little Austrian lady, and the stars were soprano Teresa Stratas, Greek-Canadian, and mezzo-soprano Giulietta Simionato, Italian. Also there at La Scala those two weeks were Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland!

Perhaps the weirdest gig I did was as a dancer in the Corps de Ballet for Italian TV. I knew the choreographer and I had to learn the “Ascot Gavotte”. I guess I did alright but I did look strange towering over the much shorter male dancers. The choreographer had been a ballerina, and as an eight-year-old student she danced in front of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini at the Baths of Caracalla. My one and only connection with Nazism and Fascism.

I also did fotoromanzi [photo novels]. I did some Grand Hotel in Milano with Georgia Moll and Edwige Fenech when I was going with her. Sogno was the biggest but I could never get in there. Most of my fotoromanzi were produced and directed by Claudio Ferrari. Names I remember working with are Marika Groff, Thea Fleming, Nuccia Cardinali and Giuliano Raffaelli. Funny story. I brought my parents over in 1965. We were in Florence, and as I was carrying our luggage across the Rialto Bridge to the parking structure, I noticed two young girls looking at a fotoromanzo and giggling. When we got closer, I realized it was one of mine! As did they! I thought they would fall in the Arno in amazement!

 

Roger with Teresa Stratas in Atlantida at La Scala.

Many of Roger's fotoromanzi were exported throughout South America with much success. Here, he and Nuccia Cardinali grace the cover of a Brazilian edition. Courtesy of Brazilian fotoromanzo collector João Piol.

 

Roger sharing a romantic scene with Ivy Holzer in the fotoromanzo "La ragazza del night club", published in Polvere di Stelle n. 24 (September 1964).

 

JM: My God, how many great, strange and unexpected things you've taken part in! Sounds like great fun!

Speaking of strange jobs... do you remember appearing in a film called La morte ha ballato un twist around 1962, together with Gordon Mitchell and an Italian-American actor named Vincent Barbi? Was that one ever finished and screened anywhere...?

 

RB: We were taken to Trieste with the promise of decent money and per diem. I, naive, took very little money with me. After three days of night shooting, they called us together to tell us the production had fallen through, there was no money at all for anyone, we were released and on our own. I had to borrow money from Gordon Mitchell, much wiser than me, to get train fare back to Rome. I of course paid him back the next day. The film never got made as far as I know. If it did, it was without us! Ahh, filming in Italia! I’m sure others had similar experiences!

 

JM: In the 1970s, your film roles were sometimes uncredited and you were doing smaller roles compared to your 1960s gladiator and Eurospy films. Were you growing tired with films at that point?

 

RB: It was more like films were growing tired of me! I followed some bad advice and left my agent. When I tried to get him back, I took him to lunch and tried to schmooze him, but it didn’t work. But the big problem was that I never did a film that was a big hit, that made a producer say “Yeah, I want THAT guy!” Argoman might have been the film but it might have been before its time.

So I did a lot of dubbing and anything I was offered, like some Emanuelle films, The Cassandra Crossing (1976), Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), et al.

 

JM: Emanuelle in America (1976), which you did with Laura Gemser, is now considered a major cult film. You played a sleazy American senator in it. Do you remember much from that film, like going to Washington on location shooting with Laura?

 

RB: Laura Gemser was nice and sweet. I didn’t have a lot to do with her but my soon to be wife Jenni hung out with her a lot when she wasn’t in the shot. I also did a bit in the next Emanuelle with Laura [Emanuelle Around the World (1977)], shot in Rome.

 

Roger with Laura Gemser in the notorious exploitation classic Emanuelle in America (1976).

Roger appearing in a brief uncredited role in the American TV movie Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), shot in Rome.

 

JM: Was the Sophia Loren biopic Sophia Loren: Her Own Story the last thing you appeared in before bidding goodbye to Rome?

 

RB: Yes, Sophia Loren’s biopic was my last in Rome. I played a captain who gives her chocolate as a child. She played her own mother, and Edmund Purdom played De Sica. I saw it at Dan Sturkie’s in North Hollywood. So I started with La Loren with Two Women and finished with her biopic. Neat!

 

JM: At Dan Sturkie’s place in North Hollywood? Now, that’s interesting! You and he kept in touch then? What was he doing after he returned to the States? Was he still acting and/or dubbing?

 

RB: I don’t think Dan was doing much but hoping, certainly not dubbing which would have been a tough market to break into. He died a few years later, smoking finally getting him. My wife and I went down to his funeral in Cerritos. He probably should have stayed in Rome until the mid-80s.

 

Dan Sturkie (right) pictured together with Roger for a 1970 newspaper article on dubbing.

 

JM: Various other dubbers like Mike Forest, Linda Gary, Mel Welles etc. also left Rome at some point in the 1970s and returned to the States. Did you stay in touch with any of your old colleagues from Rome?

 

RB: Linda Gary was a good dubber and a good friend. She worked a lot for Dick McNamara. When I came out here to go to chiro college, I stayed with Linda and her husband Chuck Howerton and their girls for two weeks, then house sat for her brother down at the beach near Venice. Linda died young of cancer. We went to her funeral; Chuck and his third wife came to my wife’s. Chuck may have dubbed for Dick. He was a friend and tennis partner, and he dubbed me in The Black Hand (1973) when I was probably busy doing Terence Hill.

I saw Mike Forest at Linda’s funeral. We stayed in touch after Jen died but his wife stopped it, apparently because she didn’t like me. I heard from Enidia Caputo of Dorado Film of Portland Oregon that she doesn’t like anyone.

Mel Welles had a great voice, good dubber with Spanish and Mexican accents. He once began one of his rants with “When I was a young New York Jewish Intellectual…” and we all groaned. I treated him over here, and he came to my chiropractic college graduation party in December 1983.

Around 2005, Stracult of Italian TV gathered several of us at the Italian Cultural Center for interviews to be shown on TV in Italy. It was a kick speaking in Italian! Not everyone could. There was Robert Woods, a friend; Brett Halsey, met there; Brad Harris, friend who I saw at my house shortly before he died; Richard Harrison, got to know; Barbara Steele, had met her long ago.

 

JM: A 1970 news article on Italian dubbing mentions there used to be a dubber who was a member of the American embassy staff and who arrived for dubbing sessions in an official car. No name mentioned, though. Do you know who that person might have been?

 

RB: I never heard of an embassy employee dubbing. Maybe before I arrived. It wouldn’t have happened on my watch or if I was just a simple member! Some people had to take two buses just for the privilege of earning $9.60, or $16.00, or $24.00 if real lucky. I’ll be damned if I would have stood for some embassy creep to take that away from one of my friends or colleagues. Many led precarious existences. Bob Sommer had to give me his apartment and go live with John Hart. George Higgins had to move to the outskirts. Charles Borromel may have slept under a stairwell for a time with his dog and Vespa. He was once late for a dubbing turn when the dog fell off the Vespa. Some kids were four in an apartment. I bailed them out. I was strapped twice and had to borrow money from Gordon Mitchell, a good guy and friend, before I got rolling a bit. But we were in Rome, the lost generation of the 60s!

 

JM: As ELDA president, did you have much contact and dealing with producers? Did they ever show up to supervise and approve of voices, or were you guys basically left to yourselves?

 

RB: We never had any direct contact with producers other than picking up payments in the office. They chose their directors who took it from there. Only exception would be Signor Palermo with Calimero. He was from Milano, a “foreigner,” giving us a project well paid, so I welcomed him in the sala, introduced him to all the dubbers, made him feel good. He spoke no English. I always checked with him if he was happy with each loop. He always was.

 

JM: What about Renato Caldonazzo? Often in the on-screen credits, he and a company named I.D.S. (International Dubbing Studios) are credited with the English version. He was a kind of dubbing producer that had his own company...?

 

RB: He was a producer and a slick one! When we, rather I, put in the line count late 1968 – I did all the work, late at night – he wanted all punctuation left out for shorter lines and less cost to him, the prick! I think Frank von Kuegelgen worked for him. He’s the one I took dialogue down off the Moviola for. He did use ELDA.

 

Renato Caldonazzo and his company I.D.S. produced a number of English dubs in the 1960s. Here credited in the opening titles fo Spy Hunt in Vienna (1965).

 

JM: Can you tell me a little more about Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca? The two of them dubbed enormously many films, and their voices are among the most emblematic of English dubbing in Rome! What were they like in and outside of the dubbing salas?

 

RB: Ted and Carolyn were friends. Ted was smart, but did not graduate from UCLA because he wouldn’t take ROTC. My wife and I beat them in a Trivial Pursuit-type game. Ted could not believe that an action actor who could move and a little girl from New Zealand – not well-educated but good at Scrabble and crossword puzzles – could beat them. In 2006, when we were over there on vacation, I told Ted about Italian Social Security, which he had never heard of. He got busy and got on their books. When things started going downhill for him, he was able to live on a modest pension until he died.

Carolyn liked the grape, and was a bit of a wild child in her early years. Ted may have been the one to straighten her out. Her father, Lew Fonseca, had been a Major League baseball player. I was in awe of her because of her father since I was an avowed jock sniffer, and we met Lew Fonseca at their apartment for dinner.

When I had some clout as ELDA president, I asked whoever was at the loggia to not smoke; Dan was terrible, but Carolyn, a smoker, carried it further by clearing the sala. The idea took off, it was put in our by-laws and became universal. Even the Italians, heavy smokers of foul cigarettes, followed suit and banned it. Those European cigarettes are foul! I had to smoke in some films, but I always kept some Marlboros handy. I got credit for abolishing smoking in the sala, but it was really Carolyn who made the big push!

Peggy Nelson and I were once cast in a play, The Painted Days. The director, John Byrne, wanted to rehearse a Sunday afternoon, but Peggy preferred to play tennis. John asked me who he could get to replace her and I recommended Carolyn, who I saw was a good actress. She was there within the hour.

 

Carolyn de Fonseca and Ted Rusoff were frequent dubbing colleagues and dear friends to Roger.

 

JM: Was there a large English language theater scene in Rome, and was this something that many dubbers took part in? I’ve heard that Frank von Kuegelgen was involved in the English theater scene, and that dubbing actor John Karlsen directed several plays in English at something called the Crypt Theater.

 

RB: We had a bit of English theater, not much. John Byrne, Englishman, put on three plays at the Teatro Dei Servi. The first was the one I did with Carolyn, and also John Stacy, I believe, and Maureen Gavin, Frank Wolff’s first wife. The lead was Bernard Fox, who I don’t think dubbed. He was in the latest Titanic (1997) in a supporting role.

Then we did The Ballad of Barbara Allen with a lot of people – Dan Sturkie and I, and several others, including dubbers. Big cast, we usually outnumbered the audience!

The last play was The Woman with Red Hair, with Alan Alda, who would do M*A*S*H on TV, and his father Roger, well known on Broadway.

Frances Reilly Persichetti did some children’s theater at the Teatro Goldoni with many of us participating – me, Dan, Bob Sommer, Charles Borromel, Jay Riley. Also the Everyman plays where I played Jesus Christ, looked pretty good. We held ELDA meetings there when our numbers rose.

No one made any money on theater! Frank von Kuegelgen and his wife Margaret tried to get English theater going in... Florence! Why, who knows? They went to Rome with their son Eric and found John Gayford who saved them, got Frank into adapting. Margaret eventually split for the States, and Frank married Sonia, an Italian sala assistant.

First I’ve heard of John Karlsen directing plays. Maybe before I arrived. He had a strange voice, like a lisp. Doubt he did much dubbing. Maybe brusio.

 

JM: Frank von Kuegelgen’s wife Sonia De Dominicis… I understand she used to dub your old flame Edwige Fenech in English in many of her 1970s films. I suppose because they felt a bit of a Mediterranean accent would suit Edwige...

 

RB: Wow! This is a real hoot! Edwige’s first film in Italy as you may know was Samoa, la regina della giungla (1968) with me! If it was ever dubbed in English while I was still there it’s news to me, and I would have been highly offended not being called in to dub myself in my kind of film. If it was after we left in 1980, no problem. If someone didn’t call me to shield me and my to-be wife Jenni from embarrassment shame on them! Jen knew of Edwige, saw our posters around Rome, knew it was several years before WE even met! She was a grownup; knew I had a life before her.

Sonia’s English was quite good, got better with Frank. Edwige was a Pied-Noir, born in Algiers. Thus, her native language was French, and not that good. She eventually spoke Italian I imagine, but I doubt very well. Sonia must have had problems syncing her.

Frank and Sonia were good friends. When our first baby was stillborn, they were right there at the hospital to console us. The night after the big reunion dinner in 2006 we got together to talk, but nothing was said about the Edwige dubbing. Ancient history.

 

Roger with Edwige Fenech in Samoa, the Queen of the Jungle (1968).

Sonia De Dominicis, who provided the English voice of Edwige Fenech in such 1970s films as Poker in Bed (1974), Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) and Sex with a Smile (1976).

 

JM: I’ve never managed to find a copy in English of Samoa anywhere, but it seems that an English language version was indeed created at some point, because MovieTime SRL, the film’s rights holder, lists Italian, French, Spanish and English versions being available in their sales catalogue.

 

RB: I imagine that after Samoa came out, producers saw that face and proportionate body, rather like Gina Lollobrigida, not all that voluptuous but sexy, and Samoa was pulled along for an English version. Edwige never had an acting lesson, which was obvious. She relied only on her physical attributes, which were considerable. I remember going with her to a party at Renato Morazzini’s place, a gay guy about, and people broke into a song popular at the time, “La coppia più bella del mondo”, 90% attributed to her! Though Renato did like my legs!

I took her to my favorite ristorante and the baseball team from Milano was there, and when I introduced them to her, they almost knocked over their table to get to her!

We were doomed from the beginning. I was twice her age, and when she said “je voudrais un bébé”, I started looking at my watch. I made a halfhearted attempt to keep her, even went up to Livorno where she was doing a film with John Ericson [Tails, You Lose… (1969)], who I knew from LA, but it was over. I think she got her baby from a director whose name escapes me. I ran into her once at a dubbing studio. It was civil. Life goes on.

 

JM: What are your memories of Susan Mueller/Spafford, who dubbed ridiculously many films?

 

RB: Susan was a very good dubber. She was an LA valley girl, went to UCLA, as did I and Ted, and Rodd for a while. She may have been influenced to come to Rome by her drama teacher. We were on the ELDA by-laws committee together. Did not know her well, though we did go together about a week and a half before I went to Spain for Patton. Susan later married Bob Spafford.

 

JM: Pat Starke was another busy female dubber. Any memories of her?

 

RB: Maybe you know things I do not. Pat Starke… I don’t remember ever meeting her, much less dubbing with her!

 

JM: Who were some of the other main female dubbers of the 60s and 70s then? Other than Susan, Carolyn, Peggy Nelson, Silvia Faver, Jodean Russo, Linda Gary etc, can you think of any others that used to do leading roles?

 

RB: Young females you pretty much nailed. I can only add Sally Amarù, who was John Fonseca’s squeeze, and Joan Rowe, who Ted went with before or during the time he married Carolyn. But it was revolving doors, the industry was booming, outdoor eating, fun was had! Girls were arriving from London, France, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, hoping to be discovered. Few were. Do not recall any from Norway, though, but maybe Rodd does. He often had one there, one just left, and another on the way.

 

JM: What about Edward Mannix? He was very much in the demand all through the 1970s.

 

RB: Ed Mannix had a good voice, dubbed a lot, though was not an actor. He was a writer, but I don’t know if he was ever published. He may have done adaptations, possibly for Frank von Kuegelgen or Nick Alexander. I touched bases with Ed over here when applying for our pensions.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Ed was living back in Maine with Pat Allison when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer so he shot himself.

 

JM: Oh. I didn’t know about that. Pat Allison… would that be Patricia Allison, the wife of actor Steffen Zacharias? I know the two of them lived in Rome for several years in the 1960s and 70s, and, according to John Gayford, Steffen used to do some English dubbing. Maybe Pat did as well…?

 

RB: You worked it all out about Pat Allison and Steve Zacharias! He was sort of a flaky little guy, did some coaching and weaselly parts for Gene, probably Nick also. Don’t know what happened to him.

I saw Ed Mannix when he came over here around 1985. We conferred on our Italian Social Security. One needed 20 years to be eligible. He must have barely made it. As did I but with a lot more jobs, i.e., days of work. At some point he hooked up with Pat who may have done a bit of dubbing. How they ended up in Maine I don’t know. She may have been left some money and/or some property.

 

Ed Mannix, the man behind one of the most prolific and iconic voices of English dubbing in Rome.

 

JM: When you appeared in the television pilot Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965) starring Gordon Scott, the villain was played by Stephen Garrett, who was another long-time dubber. Do you have any memories of him?

 

RB: Steve Garrett was one of late fifties ELDA dubbers and I really didn’t get going until 1961. Nice fellow, but a rather bearded, unkempt schlub. I think he was a writer, possibly of adaptations, and might have done dialogue coaching for films. I recall hearing him speak of a conversation he had with Sophia Loren where he was using an accent for no reason and didn’t know how to stop it. I don’t recall Steve as a dubber. Maybe we were on different loops. Remember, I was just one of many dubbers – only saw who I worked with, and had nothing to do with casting.

 

JM: You and a guy Edward Van Sickle both had small roles as ad agency executives in the Diana Ross film Mahogany (1975). I understand that he, too, used to dub…

 

RB: Edward was a good friend. I used to see him at Church and he did bit parts like Mahagony. “Yes, but she was bellissima!” was one of my lines.

Edward had Sunday evening salons where he liked to sing. His favorite was Vienna, Vienna. His good friend was Feodor Chaliapin, son of the famous Russian basso, and the grandpa in Moonstruck (1987), always walking the dogs speaking Italian.

 

JM: Which serves as a rather amusing reminder of how small the world is, because Feodor Chaliapin was the ex-husband of your dubbing colleague Cicely Browne, having been married to her way back in the early 1940s, when she was a pretty, young stage actress.

 

RB: Wow! This I did not know! Cicely must have lived a hard life since marrying. She didn’t look so good when I knew her. Maybe she was a heavy drinker and/or smoker. Good dubber, though. I think she got so tired of seeing an ‘e’ at the end of my name that she started adding one herself!

 

JM: What about Mel Gaines? Did you know him well?

 

RB: Mel Gaines a.k.a. Moose Mushegian I knew longer than anyone. We first met in the Air Force, then years later in Hollywood after drama class. Then in Rome when he came to act and got into dubbing. He did heavies, no leads. Good voice but had trouble syncing. We were in Patton together. His friend was the actor John Doucette, who took us to dinner every night and we put him to bed drunk every night.

Moose packed it in, came back to the States and applied to chiropractic college and, wonder of wonders, was accepted. He could be a charmer! He finished and went to practice over in Sardegna. I visited him, and got to thinking that I could do the same eventually. I always did like to study.

Moose started getting throat problems. He came back to a cancer hospital and they did a laryngectomy. I went to see him. He could only speak with one of those devices. He had married a Florentine lady. She took him back to Florence where he eventually died. He had been a smoker. Yes, I knew Moose. Good guy.

 

JM: Moose Mushegian? Was that an alias he used…?

 

RB: Moose’s birth name was Mel, I guess Melvin Mushegian. He went with Gaines for his nome d’arte. I don’t know where he got Gaines from but I think it was a good choice. I am the only one who ever called him Moose. Too easy not to!

 

Roger's long-time friend Mel Gaines.

 

JM: You also worked with Nona Medici, who was a great voice for older women.

 

RB: Never spoke to her other than ‘Hello’. Nona was the first manly woman I ever met except for my aunt, who was a head nurse who I loved dearly. She saved my life as a baby when I had whooping cough.

 

JM: Chrystel Dane was another dubber. Do you remember much about her?

 

RB: Chrystel was a cute little blonde Brit who I think didn’t dub much and I don’t know why. Her voice was light, might not have registered well. She was smart, gave me a good tip on Italian banking. Married and still over there, up North, I think.

 

JM: Gene Luotto and Lew Ciannelli were the directors you worked the most for? Which other directors did you work a lot with?

 

RB: Yes, I worked with Gene a lot on Terence Hill, Lew on Argoman and others. Otherwise, I worked with Dick McNamara, Nick Alexander, George Higgins, Ted Rusoff for scraps. And Meyer Glickman on Alfredo Alfredo (1972), a Dustin Hoffman film by Pietro Germi in which I dubbed Tom Skerritt.

 

JM: I don’t think Tom Skerritt appears in Alfredo, Alfredo, though I know he appeared in a few other Italian films in the 1970s. For example, a film called La Madama (1975), which was apparently released in English as Sexy Cop, but I’ve never found a copy in English. The star was Vittorio De Sica’s son, Christian. Could this have been the film you dubbed Tom Skerritt in?

And Did Meyer Glickman direct much? He is credited with doing some adaptations, including some for Dick McNamara.

 

RB: La Madama I never heard of. I didn’t know that De Sica had a son. His daughter Emi was Mike Forest’s agent, and we celebrated Mike’s 50th birthday at her flat.

Meyer was a friend, a good guy and director. During a gas shortage in the early 70s, he, Mike Forest, and Jen and I went on a Sunday ski outing. We were having fun, especially when Jen sat on her ski pole leaving it bent at a right angle.

 

JB: Did you do any work for a dubbing director named Cesare Mancini? Was he an Italian-American? Or a real Italian?

 

RB: Cesare Mancini was pretty good guy. He was Italian, but spoke English quite well with a bit of a lisp. I worked quite a bit for him. I don’t think he used an assistant, like Nick Alexander and Ted Rusoff often. The good ones never cut corners!

 

JM: What about Gino Bardi? He was one of the old-time ELDA directors from back in the early days of dubbing, right? Do you know if he did much acting, too? He’s credited with an acting role in a western film called Death Walks in Laredo (1967)…

 

RB: I don’t know when Gino first arrived in Rome. Him as an actor and in a western at that is hard to imagine, though he must have enjoyed those high-heeled western boots. I only dubbed for him once. He just seemed to always have young boys around him. Met him at the beach once like that. He was very elegant and proper, like a mentor.

 

Veteran dubbing director Gino Bardi in a rare on-screen role in Death Walks in Laredo (1967).

 

JB: Geoffrey Copleston was another director. Did you do any work for him?

 

RB: Geoffrey Copleston and I had a problem, but I don’t remember what about. I declined working for him and I NEVER turned anything down! I don’t think he left much of a footprint on dubbing.

 

JM: Some others that are known to have been involved with dubbing in Rome during the 1960s and/or 70s are Jim and Vera Dolen, Lucretia Love, John Thompson, Cyrus Elias, Marvin Drake, Alice Campbell, Jan and Robert Lowell, and Denise Carpenter. Did you know any of these people?

 

RB: Jim Dolen was a good guy and dubber who died suddenly. Carolyn organized several of us to sit with Vera during her grieving. I suppose she dubbed some.

I never met Lucretia Love. Don’t know if she ever dubbed.

John Thompson was a young guy, a friend of Nick Alexander and Mel Welles, I think. I don’t know how much dubbing he did.

Cyrus Elias was a fringe dubber, knew a lot of people, did some film work.

Marvin Drake, barely remember his name. Fringe dubber if at all.

Alice Campbell was married, at least for a while, to Frank Wolff, but not when he lived at the Hilton Residence where we played tennis and he committed suicide. If she dubbed I do not know. As I have said, if I wasn’t dubbing, I generally did not know who was.

Jan Lowell and her husband Bob I didn’t know well. They were writers, I think they co-wrote Shelly Winters’ autobiography. Nick may have used them, I don’t know. Rodd knew them.

Denise Carpenter I sort of remember. A large lady.

 

JM: Thank you so much for all your help. You’re really enormously helpful in helping me to piece together the history of English language dubbing in Rome. Your recollections are pure gold!

 

RB: Johan, as I have said many times I have learned so much more from you than you have from me! Plus, you have awakened in me knowledge of people and things that I haven’t thought of in more than 40 years! Let’s keep in touch!