Nina Rootes

 

Nina Rootes (1925-2016), also known as Nina Golding, was a British voice dubbing actress, sync assistant, script adapter, literary translator and author who was active on the English dubbing scene in Rome from 1959 to 1961, lending her voice primarily to parts as ingénues or damsels in distress. Despite the fact that Nina’s time in the dubbing business was relatively short-lived and that many of the films she worked on are currently not available anywhere in English, her career is still very much worthy of closer examination, not least because of the many detailed recollections she shares in her autobiographical book Adventures in the Movie Biz (2013), an endlessly fascinating first-hand account of the inner workings of the Roman film and dubbing industry of the early 1960s.

Born on November 29, 1925 in Hythe, Kent, England, her birth name was Nellie Jean Golding, but she was known simply as Nina Golding. Little is known about Nina’s early life and she doesn’t elaborate on this in her book either, except mentioning that her family left Hythe when she was just six weeks old and that, having the heart of a gypsy, she’s been on the move ever since.

Nina’s early artistic passion was for ballet, and in 1942, aged seventeen, she joined the Ballet Rambert (today called the Rambert Dance Company) and toured the country throughout and just after WW2. Later, with the London Ballet, she travelled to Belgium and Germany to entertain British and Belgian troops, but an injury would eventually put an end to Nina’s ballet career.

 

Nina at age 17.

By 1958, she also had a failed marriage behind her and was down on her luck. Boldly, Nina decided to travel to Italy, even though she had no more than £3 in her purse and no job to go to. She had only the promise of a mattress on the floor of a friend’s apartment, but having taught English while living in Paris and Barcelona the last couple of years, she felt fairly optimistic that she’d be able to land a similar job in Rome. And so Nina arrived in Rome in November 1958 and did indeed manage to secure a job teaching English at the Shenker Institute. This, in turn, would eventually lead to a career in dubbing, and in her book, Nina gives a detailed account of her entry into the Roman dubbing world:

“My boss at work, Bill [William Kiehl], was an American, and, like most of the Americans I met in Rome at that time, he was gay. He and I got on famously. I knew that he was a successful part-time actor and I heard that, in the summer, he would disappear back to the States and do Summer Stock, taking leading parts. He told me that he was also doing a lot of dubbing, here in Rome, and asked if I would like to audition for this work. Of course, I jumped at the chance. In my extreme youth, I had danced with the Rambert Company and, after an injury put an end to my career, I had always longed to get back into the performing arts. I hadn’t the faintest idea how the dubbing was done, but I duly appeared in one of the numerous sound studios in the city, with Bill to introduce me to the director, Mac [Richard McNamara], who became a good friend, both personally and professionally.

“At one end of the studio was a full-size screen. Well back from this was a reading stand with an open script upon it and two sets of headphones. In front of the stand was the mike. At the back of the studio was the glass-enclosed, sound-proofed recording room, with the technicians seated at the console. I felt both thrilled and terrified. Mac explained that the film was called ‘I Cosacchi’, the Cossacks, and he asked me to read one of the parts. My legs turned to jelly and I was even more terrified than I had been before. I had been warned that, since all the other dubbers were American, I would have to speak with an American accent, or at least what is called mid-Atlantic. This added to my problems, but I managed reasonably well apparently.

“First, we watched a short loop from the film. It was a scene between the hero, dubbed by Bill, and a minor female character. They ran it several times for us, while we silently read the corresponding lines of dialogue, translated into English, from the open script on the stand. The next step was to watch the loop without the Italian dialogue, each holding the cuffia, or earphone, to one ear so that we could still catch the rhythm of the speech. Finally, the loop was run silently and we made our first attempt to read the English lines aloud, still listening to the cuffia, keeping in sync and, at the same time, trying to give as good a performance as we could. Quite an ordeal. As well as the artistic director, who made suggestions after each run-through, there was a sync director present, who corrected us if we did not get the rhythm, and the length of each line right. We made five or six attempts, and with each one I gained more confidence and projected myself more and more into the character, keeping my eyes glued to the screen.

“I was actually beginning to enjoy it when Mac said “OK.” And it was all over. I waited for the inevitable ‘No,’ but he said: ‘I was testing you for a small part, but I liked what you did so much that I want you to play the lead. You have a beautiful voice and you can take direction.’

“Bill gave me a great big hug, which was just as well, as otherwise I think I would have collapsed with shock. I doubt if I’ve ever felt as elated as I did that day, and when Mac introduced me to someone as ‘our new diva’, I thought I was dreaming.

 

Although largely forgotten today, The Cossacks (1960) was a notable success in its day, and was distributed theatrically in the US by Universal.

Nina dubbed the role of the beautiful leading lady Giorgia Moll, whom she also dubbed in other Italian films.

 

“From then on, I played a lot of ingénue roles, mostly heroines, very often damsels in distress, but also a few character parts that, in a way, were more fun because I had to use different voices and create a personality. Now and then, I was asked to keep my English accent, as it suited certain parts, for instance, an oracle in one of the numerous Hercules epics that the Italians were churning out at the time.”

Later in her book, Nina details a few of the other roles she dubbed, writing: “[T]he dubbing was going really well and I was continuing to play lots of ingénue parts, dubbing the German [sic] actress, Giorgia Moll in ‘Mogli Pericolose’ (Dangerous Wives) and the French Agnès Laurent in a costume drama. In this film, she starred opposite a rising young Italian actor, Sergio Fantoni, who later became a student of mine. I also played the odd character role, such as a croaky old dame in ‘The King of Poggioreale’ with Ernest Borgnine. I really enjoyed the part.”

 

The Night of the Great Attack (1959) is the costume drama in which Nina remembers dubbing the voice of Agnès Laurent, who is pictured here with leading man Sergio Fantoni, whose voice was provided by Nina's friend and dubbing colleague William Kiehl.

 

Nina together with four of her dubbing friends at a party circa 1959/60. From left to right: William Kiehl, Stephen Garrett, Nina, George Higgins and Mike Billingsley.

 

She also dubbed a major part in the now forgotten South American-set adventure film Seven in the Sun (1960), starring her frequent dubbing partner Frank Latimore. “I had a gorgeous part as an Indian girl of whatever country it was supposed to be,” Nina recalls in her book. “I struggled to find an accent and ended up with something half-way between Spanish and Indian. Afterwards, Frank said that Steve [Stephen Garrett], one of our leading actors, and I were ‘sublime’, so I felt disgustingly smug for days.”

Unfortunately, it seems that a lot of the films Nina worked on are currently not available in English, but this video features a handful of her dubbing performances, with to hopefully be identified later on:

 

 

After about a year in Rome, Nina was fluent enough in Italian that she was able to pick up extra work by translating scripts from Italian to English and adapting them for lip sync. Just how much work she did in this field, however, is impossible to determine, as so far, her name has only turned up in the credits of a single film: the peplum adventure The Invincible Gladiator (1961).

 

In the English opening titles of The Invincible Gladiator, Nina is credited (as Nina Golding, the name she was still known under during those days) with writing the English version together with Frank Gregory.

 

Due to her knack for sync, Nina would also sometimes work as a sync assistant, helping the dubbers match the lip movements and timing of the on-screen actors. While doing this job, she sometimes got to work with American actors who came in to post-synchronize their own performances, such as Susan Strasberg in Kapo (1960) and Jack Palance in The Mongols (1961). Interestingly, the currently available English version of The Mongols is not a Rome dub, indicating that the film originally came with an export dub which has since disappeared due to the film being re-dubbed in the US.

Concurrent with her dubbing activities, Nina also continued to work part-time at the Shenker Institute. She taught classes, but also did one-on-one lessons with two Italian actors who were seeking to improve their English: one was the then up-and-coming Sergio Fantoni, and the other was one of Italy’s most famous and beloved film stars: Alberto Sordi. In her book, Nina devotes considerable space to her working relationship with the latter, which was not always an easy one, and she describes several episodes of decidedly unsympathetic behavior from the great Italian star. Nevertheless, the two of them had much respect for one another, and Sordi trusted Nina so much that he brought her along as part of his entourage while he was filming his roles in Luigi Comencini’s Everybody Go Home (1960), in which Nina ended up getting a small uncredited role, and Vittorio De Sica’s The Last Judgment (1961).

Italian film icon Alberto Sordi (1920-2003).

 

In 1961, Alberto was cast alongside David Niven in the Anglo-Italian war comedy The Best of Enemies, directed by Guy Hamilton. This was the first time for Alberto playing a part in English, and he brought Nina along for the shoot as his personal dialogue coach. The film was shot largely on location in the Negev desert in Israel, where the sweltering desert temperatures made the shoot rather challenging, and Nina also had her hands full working with Alberto on his English – making certain that he understood the exact meaning of his dialogue and that he got his pronunciation and intonation as near-perfect as possible. She knew full well that if she failed at this, Alberto would end up having his lines dubbed over by another actor during post-production, which would be massive let-down for them both.

Despite several hurdles along the way, shooting of The Best of Enemies eventually wrapped, but for Nina, her work on the film was far from finished. “Quite the contrary,” she recalls in her book, “now would come the real acid test – could Alberto dub his part well enough to eliminate the need for another actor to do the job? The situation was crucial for us both. Throughout the post-production dubbing, I remained glued to Alberto’s side and followed every word, every breath he took. Thank goodness Sordi trusted me implicitly and listened to me and allowed me to nag and nag at him till he got it right. A less dedicated artist would probably have punched me on the nose and sent me packing. I really admired the way he stuck with it and, in the end, Heaven be praised, he made a really good job of the dubbing.”

 

Nina with Alberto Sordi and David Niven at the SAFA-Palatino Studios in Rome during the production of The Best of Enemies.

In 1961, Nina met the English film editor Maurice Rootes, who was in Rome working on the fantasy adventure film Jason and the Argonauts, featuring stop-motion animation visual effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen. Nina and Maurice fell in love, and this would prove to be the end of her dubbing days in Rome as the couple returned to England, where they were married on January 20, 1962.

 

Film editor Maurice Rootes (1917-1997), Nina's husband of 35 years.

From then on, the couple would be on the move for years, as Maurice’s film editing job took him all over the world. In 1963, Nina, Maurice and Marcus (Maurice’s son from a previous relationship) headed for Toronto, where Maurice had been hired to work as the supervising editor of the Canadian children’s TV series The Forest Rangers (1963-65), which was followed by an editing job on another series called Seaway (1965-66). While living in Toronto, Nina was hired to do an English translation of the French medieval adventure TV series Thierry la Fronde, which was a tremendous success in France and which would run for a total of four seasons from 1963 to 1966. Working on a Moviola flatbed editing machine at home, Nina translated and adapted all 13 episodes of the first season into English, and the entire series was subsequently dubbed into English and screened in both Canada and Australia under the title The King’s Outlaw.

 

Jean-Claude Drouot and Céline Léger were the stars of Thierry la Fronde. In the currently unavailable English dub produced in Toronto, they were dubbed by Arch MacDonald and Maxine Miller, respectively.

 

With Maurice’s work in Toronto completed, he and Nina were on the move again, this time to Madrid, where Maurice worked on Custer of the West (1967) and Krakatoa: East of Java (1969), and then later to Rome, where he worked on 12 + 1 (1969). The couple then finally returned to London, where Nina got back into the dubbing game by dubbing foreign movies into English at De Lane Lea Studios.

In London, however, they didn’t use the dubbing method Nina was used to from Rome, but instead employed a dubbing system known as the rhythm band – a moving band with the film’s dialogue projected at the bottom of the screen, with the dubbers speaking the words exactly as they hit a bar.

“I hated this innovation and found it much harder to relate to my part,” Nina writes in her book. “For some, it made it easier to keep in sync, but that had never been a big problem for me.”

In addition to dubbing, Nina’s fluency in French and Italian was to launch her into a new career as a literary translator, with her gaining particular praise and recognition for her efforts to translate the works of Swiss poet and modernist writer Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961) from French to English. Starting with her translation of Cendrars’ autobiographical novel The Astonished Man in 1970, Nina made a number of Cendrars’ key works available to English readers throughout the 1970s and 80s.

From French, Nina also translated Guillaume Apollinaire’s erotic classic Les Onze Mille Verges (1907) into English as The Amorous Adventures of Prince Mony Vibescu in 1976, and together with Andrée Masoin de Virton, she co-translated the autobiography of renowned singer Edith Piaf. She also did translations from Italian, such as Amarcord: Portrait of a Town (1974), a novelization of Federico Fellini’s famous film Amarcord (1973), written by Fellini himself in collaboration with Tonino Guerra.

 

 

Amarcord: Portrait of a Town, one of the many books translated into English by Nina.

 

Nina also authored a number of her own novels, but unfortunately had little luck getting them published. The sole exception was the gothic novel Mary Dexter, Mary Sinister, which was picked up by Sphere Paperbacks in 1983. To Nina’s dismay, it was sold as a horror story, but she was nevertheless excited to be getting published.

“I must admit I found it exciting to walk into bookshops and see it there on the shelves, even if the cover illustration was perfectly dreadful,” she writes in her book. “What I had written was a gothic novel, but one that was also a parable of good and evil, but the cover picture showed, not twins, an essential element of the story, but what looked like an American teenager with freckles. The snake coming out of her mouth might just as well have been bubble gum. There was also a ridiculous howler in the blurb, where they had written: ‘The villagers were braying (sic) for blood’ instead of ‘baying for blood’. I asked them to change it, but they said it would cost too much.”

 

The Mary Dexter, Mary Sinister book cover that Nina so greatly disliked.

 

In 1985, Nina was tasked with writing the tie-in novel to the British romance film The Frog Prince, about a young English girl who goes to Paris to study at the Sorbonne and falls in love with a handsome Frenchman. This was to be the last time she worked on a film related project, but she continued to do literary translations with much success, reaching a high-point when her translation of Blaise Cendrars’ Sky: Memoirs earned her the French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize in 1993.

Not long afterwards, Nina and Maurice decided to relocate to Ludlow, a small market town in the south of Shropshire. Nina was now in her late 60s but by no means ready for a quite life of retirement, and decided to join the Ludlow Amateur Dramatic Society (LADS). Maurice, sadly, passed away of cancer in 1997, but Nina forged on, and with LADS she directed the production “An Evening with Jane Austen”, and appeared in “Liaisons Dangereuses” in the role of Madame de Rosemonde.

 

Nina, seated at the front with the black hat on, and the rest of the cast of the LADS production of Liaisons Dangereuses.

 

LADS eventually disintegrated, but Nina kept herself busy during her twilight years by doing a lot of travelling abroad and being an active member in the local film club and in the writers’ group. She published numerous short stories, including one in the prestigious London Magazine, and wrote her autobiographical book Adventures in the Movie Biz in 2013 at the age of 87. A creative and adventurous soul to the very end, Nina passed away in Ludlow on August 14, 2016, aged 90.

 

English dubbing filmography

 

- Dangerous Wives (1958) - voice of Claudina Carpi (Giorgia Moll)

- The Devil’s Cavaliers (1959) - voice of Countess Louise de Valance (Emma Danieli)

- The Night of the Great Attack (1959) - voice of Countess Isabella (Agnès Laurent)

- The Cossacks (1960) - voice of Tatiana (Giorgia Moll)

- Hercules in the Center of the Earth (1961) - voice of Medea (Gaia Germani)

 

Additionally, Nina recalls in her book that she dubbed roles in the films Seven in the Sun (1960) and The King of Poggioreale (1961) but as neither of these films are currently available in English, it has not been possible to ascertain which actresses she dubbed in them.