Interview with Eleonora Baldwin

 

 

Today, I am proud to present to you an interview with one of the really great dubbing ladies of Rome: Eleonora Baldwin, who was a very prolific voice for teenage characters all through the 1980s, 90s and 2000s, including such famous characters as Jennifer Connelly’s French roommate Sophie (Federica Mastroianni) in Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985), infuriatingly bitchy birthday girl Sally (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) in Lamberto Bava’s Demons 2 (1986) and the lovesick girlfriend (Katja Anton) of a dead motorcyclist in Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore (1994). I’ve already covered Eleonora’s dubbing career in more detail here, but I want to stress how very happy I am to finally be able to put voice and face together, because it’s several years since I first began to recognize that prolific teenage girl voice in film after film, and I’d long been struggling in vain to find out just who on earth it belonged to. So, when I got in touch with Eleonora and, through the films and actresses she remembered having dubbed, realized that I had actually found the lady behind that long-elusive teenage voice at long last, I was really thrilled! And better yet, Eleonora kindly agreed to be interviewed about her time in the Roman dubbing salas. I had a terrific time chatting with Eleonora on Zoom in September 2026, and now without any further ado, I present to you our interview, lightly edited for context and clarity. Enjoy!

 

Johan Melle: Can we start by talking a bit about your background? Is it fair to say that as the daughter of actor and TV director Peter Baldwin and the granddaughter of renowned filmmaker Vittorio De Sica, you pretty much grew up around cinema?

 

Eleonora Baldwin: Yeah, but more like a destiny sort of thing. When I was growing up, my maternal grandfather was present, but not live-in present. He had two families. He spent Sundays with us, but cinema was not like a daily conversation. It was talked about at home, but it wasn’t exclusive. My mom, Emi De Sica, raised me as a single parent. I spent time with my dad in California in the summer, but she was the one who did the day-to-day raising of me. And she really focused on culture, so I would be brought to the opera at seven. I was also a very calm child, so I would just stay there, and maybe not absorb it all, but she said by osmosis I would. That was her thing, and she did the same with my younger sister when she came along when I was fifteen, after my mother had remarried. She really fostered literature and reading, going to the opera, ballet and theater, and of course cinema – going to the movies and talking about film. When videocassettes and later DVDs came along, she was the first to sit my sister and me down and just turn down the lights in our little dining room and watch movies and she would comment. So, cinema was in that sense very present in my upbringing, but it was through my mother more than my filmmaker grandfather. Of course, we knew about him, but only as we got older did we understand the figure – the icon – that he was. He died when I was seven, so I got it all as a rebound when I was a young woman.

By the same token, my father was also initially an actor, and when he lived in Rome, he was also a part of… of what was before ARA [Associated Recording Artists]. I forget what the name was…

 

JM: Oh, you mean ELDA? The English Language Dubbers Association.

 

EB: Yes. So, you can find Peter Baldwin also. He was also doing stuff back then.

 

JM: He was dubbing?

 

EB: He was dubbing in English, yes. It wasn’t a huge industry back then, but he had buddies. He knew Nick Alexander and Frank von Kuegelgen and all of these people, so he did some of that while he was acting. And then he switched. He went into television directing after he separated from my mom and he wasn’t living in Rome anymore. Spending summers with him, I got to see what three-camera sitcoms were like in the 80s and 90s. So, that was something I got from him. I spent more time with him on a television set than on a film set with my mom.

 

Eleonora's father Peter Baldwin (1931-2017), seen here in The Possessed (1965), one of the many Italian films he appeared in during the 1960s. Despite being a dubber himself, he did not provide his own voice for the English version and was instead dubbed by Tony Russel.

Eleonora's mother Emi De Sica (1938-2021) with her father, the legendary Vittorio De Sica (1901-1974).

 

 

JM: Your mother was an agent, right?

 

EB: She was a talent agent, yeah, and that’s how she met my dad, because he was acting and seeking representation. And my grandfather wasn’t very happy that she was an agent. He didn’t want her to be in showbiz, and wanted to save her from that.

 

JM: But how did dubbing originally start for you? How did you fall into that world?

 

EB: My school was an international school in Rome called the American Overseas School, and there was a little line-up of buses that would take the kids to the various neighborhoods, because the kids going to this school were international or diplomat kids and so on. My parents were gracious enough to enroll me into this international school so I could keep both my languages going while learning others, which was the biggest perk of going there. My bus wasn’t the cool bus, because I lived – and still live – in the Parioli neighborhood, which is a very quiet and snobby area where all the embassies, art institutes, parks and museums are. So, I was home in a cradle of culture, but all my friends were living in the center, and that was the cool bus! But one day, on this bus, when I was about 16 or 17 years old, two girlfriends came on and said: “We’re going to do a dubbing test. Do you want to come with us?” I think there had been a bulletin at the school, or someone had – as they often did – gone to the schools and said they were looking for teenage girl voices. Anyway, I went with them, and I don’t think any of them got a part, but I ended up getting one, and I believe it was for Lew Ciannelli on the film Cenerentola ’80 (1984) – released in English as Cindy – Cinderella ’80 – and I believe I dubbed Edi Angelillo, who was a young actress with big curly red hair. That was my very first turn, and I got it because I randomly tagged along with these girls!

 

Eleonora got her start in dubbing by lending her voice to Edi Angelillo in the popular teen romance Cindy - Cinderella '80 (1984).

 

I went on to work on many more films for Lew and for Nick Alexander, Ted Rusoff, Gene Luotto and Frank von Kuegelgen, as well as some others. I was often used for younger roles even as an adult, but my voice has changed somewhat over the years.

When I was nearing the end of high school, I realized my parents were both terrified that I would go into showbiz. They knew that dubbing was a like a little side-gig and that it wasn’t going to be my future, but they were still a little hesitant. “Do you want to act?” they asked me. And to their surprise, I replied that I wasn’t really interested in acting, and wanted to go into graphic design or art history. I also didn’t want to go to college in the States. I wanted to stay in Europe, because I was very attached to my mom and I did not want to leave her since she was by then on her own. So, they were relieved, but then after a few years of graphic design and travel, I got this itch – the DNA was calling – and I realized I did want to be on a film set. Something was pulling me! But I didn’t want to be in front of the camera, but rather behind it. And that’s when my mom gave me the talk that I believe her dad gave her. She said: “Don’t use your grandfather’s name. You have your dad’s last name. You’ve grown up in this environment and you know cinema from the inside, but don’t use that, because then you’ll always be the granddaughter of Vittorio De Sica. You’ll never really know if people are hiring you because you’re good at it, or because of your name. So don’t ever milk that! Someone will find out and make the connection eventually, but then it’s not you flaunting it.” And that was terrific advice, and I went on to have a great 15-year – or maybe a little more – career as a script supervisor. I had a wonderful time and was really good at it!

One of my last big dubbing gigs was Quiet Flows the Don (2006) for Frank von Kuegelgen, and I have the clearest memories of that film because it’s the most recent. I remember I was pregnant at the time and there was a scene I had to do where Aksinia, the female lead whose voice I was dubbing, loses a child, and I had to cry and convey the incredible despair of this infant dying from a disease. And Frank was so delicate, and was asking: “Are you sure you’re up to this? Because this is shocking and you’re carrying a child in you.” What an amazing gentleman he was! I even sang for that role, which was interesting as I’ve never sung a note in my life, but he managed to make me do it, because Aksinia sings at one point.

And then I just stopped, because at one point when my son was four, I was script supervisor on The American (2010), starring and produced by George Clooney, and shot in Abruzzo, and I said to myself: “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t want to be here with Mr. Hollywood. I want to be home with my child.” And so that was it for me. That was my last film job. I started writing and going on a different tangent, so that’s my professional arc. If they call me, I continue to go and do little dubbing things, but it’s very rare.

 

One of Eleonora's last dubbing jobs was as the English voice of French actress Delphine Forrest in Sergei Bondarchuk's Quiet Flows the Don (2006, but originally shot in the early 1990s).

 

JM: Now, Lew Ciannelli, who you started out with, was one of the real dubbing old-timers, and I believe he even directed the dubbing of some of your grandfather’s films. What do you remember about him?

 

EB: Yes, he told me he had dubbed some of them in English. Oh, he was adorable! He was like a little turtle. He was very tiny and wrinkly and he looked like Yoda. [laughs] He was very gentle and he taught me tricks, because I didn’t know anything about sync. He’d say: “Don’t use the headphone! Try and see what she’s saying.” He’d feed me the dialogue in my ear as the lips were moving, and he taught me to understand that it was all about getting the rhythm of how that person was talking. He said: “You can try and listen to the Italian dialogue in the headphone, but you’re just gonna try and imitate and you’re gonna become a robot. I want you to get the intonation of what she’s saying. Get the right rhythm. It’s not about acting, it’s getting the rhythm and then going into sync.” That was great!

He’d be doing little bit parts as well, and since he had lined up the loops, he would sometimes do one and I’d be sitting there waiting. I remember this one time he had to take a bite out of an apple and, evidently, there was no effects track, because Lew had to mimic the sound of that apple, and he took a piece of paper and just slowly crushed it in his hand – with sync – and it sounded exactly like a bite. I was in awe, going: “How did you do that!?” [laughs]

He was a very gentle, patient, loving grandfather figure. Who looked like Yoda. He was amazing. And he passed rather early. I only learned about it a while after he was gone, and it was one of the first losses, and I’ve had many – with Nick, Gene and then Frank. It was really like pieces of my childhood falling, and we were close!

 

Long-time dubbing director Lewis E. Ciannelli in Evil Senses (1986), one of this most prominent on-screen roles.

 

 

JM: As we discussed a bit via email, you dubbed a lot of Italian horror movies in the 1980s – voicing teenage girls in Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava movies like Phenomena and the Demons films and several others. How much do you actually remember from working on those films, and was it scary?

 

EB: Well, it was scary the first time, but we would never see the whole thing. We only saw the loops in which the character we were dubbing appeared in, so we only worked on that little fragment, which would be played again and again until we got the sync down. So, sometimes, when taken out of context like that, it wasn’t very scary. It was just: “Now you’ll scream. Don’t even look at the screen, just scream!” [laughs]

I knew who Dario Argento was because of my cinema knowledge through my mother, and also Dario was close with my mom. She was an agent, remember? She had contacts, and though she didn’t cast people in his films, it was a pool of people that knew each other, and also my stepfather, Sergio Nicolai, is a theater actor and he had worked with Daria Nicolodi, Dario’s partner.

It was fun doing those films. I knew I was doing something cool, because horror movies were really big! Everyone watched horror movies. And there’s a resurgence now, I’ve noticed. My son and his girlfriend are big fans of the genre – I’m not! [laughs] I’m terrified. I’m the perfect audience member, because I freak out and hide my face in my hands. You’d think I hadn’t spent half of my life on a film set and learned what the tricks are, and what lighting and music can do!

 

JM: What was it like when you had to do scenes with a lot of screaming in them? Did you have to be very careful around the mikes?

 

EB: Yes, absolutely! The first thing the director, and also the sound technician in the booth, would tell us was that if you’re going to scream, don’t scream directly at the mike. Direct it at an angle, because it will saturate. The scream will pierce the mike and ruin the sound. So, that was the first lesson. And for a prolonged scream, the director would teach us breathing exercises. With the Lamberto Bava movies, which were usually the goriest ones, the directors were good, because they would alternate the loops. Usually, they would go in order, because it was easier to cut the loops that way, but they made sure that if there was a big screaming scene, they would put a more talking and breathing one after it to give our untrained voices a rest. Because I don’t have any theater training, so I don’t know how to use my diaphragm. It was all from my throat. And the directors didn’t mind that. They didn’t want classically trained actors, or if they did, they’d tone them down and tell them to throw it away. They didn’t want anything too theater-like. It had to be seamless so it didn’t sound dubbed. It had to sound original.

 

Lamberto Bava's Demons 2 (1986), in which Eleonora dubs the voice of Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, was one of the many horror films where Eleonora got to test her lungs in the studio.

The Ogre (1988) was another Lamberto Bava horror film where Eleonora was tasked with dubbing an imperiled character - in this case an unfortunate nanny played by Stefania Montorsi.

The work that the dubbing directors would do with the adaptation and the labials was incredible! They would maintain the context, but switch around the words. Sometimes, they’d have to make a change, or they realized that they had typed something wrong, and I would see Frank or Nick coming up with a new line from just looking at the lips on the screen. They’d try some words and then it would work. They were so experienced that they would just do this in three minutes, and it was fascinating to see how they could find the exact phonetic labial expression that maintained the context. That was really an art form!

Laughing was another thing that was hard at the beginning, because I was never an actress. I never learned these things. And crying. I learned a lot about fake crying! I was told that if I wanted to cry for real, there are ways of getting there, but for me, it didn’t really work to put on music and think of something sad. I was a 20-year-old with no problems, so it was very hard for me to find sad references. [laughs]

But these dubbing directors were really amazing. And colleagues! Pat Starke was otherworldly! I remember Steve Luotto – Gene’s youngest son – and I were sitting in the room waiting to do something while Pat was alone in the scene doing her little thing, and Steve looked at me and said: “She dubs the spit between the teeth! How the hell does she do that!?” [laughs] She was so good! She would do, like, 15 or 17 loops in a three-hour turn, and she would breeze through them and have time left over. It was insane! She’s an Oscar-worthy dubber, I would say. She was really the one that dubs the spit between the teeth, and I learned a lot from watching her work. So gentle, quiet and soft-spoken, and then she would be insane at the mike. And she was tiny! She had to stand on a box, like me.

 

JM: On a box?

 

EB: Yeah. We would stand on a little carpet-covered raiser to reach the mike. They wouldn’t put the mike low, because we had to be standing upright to project. We were reading the lines from a script, but we had to be looking up, so that required us to do a lot of learning of lines. That was another really complicated thing – learning and remembering the lines! There were several times I’d get told: “That was great, Eleonora, but you missed three words, and we need those three words because we have to maintain the sync.” So, it was very important to get the line exactly right. It was like working with Aaron Sorkin, whose scripts you cannot change ever. No improv! So, it was challenging, but I learned from my colleagues and from these incredible directors.

 

Legendary dubbing actress Pat Starke, pictured her during her days as a singer in Rome in the late 1960s.

 

JM: So, you didn’t do any kind of rehearsing?

 

EB: It was in many ways a craft that we learned on the spot, but we did do little rehearsals. You got the script the day of the recording and you would flip through it and do little rehearsals, which were good for getting the right rhythm. But again, a lot of the directors would say: “Don’t waste your voice and your intonation on a rehearsal. Let’s just record it, so that we have something, and then we can work on it.”

The script was divided into these little slices of film – the loops – that were glued together and being run again and again in the projector, and if you wanted to, you could listen to the Italian dialogue track in your ear. I eventually did start using that a lot, even though some directors, like Lew Ciannelli, was always telling us not to. He wanted us to be us. But that was him. Others would say to use the headphone.

Working with Nick, you could go to, like, take 74 while recording. [laughs] He always worked with the same sound technician in the back, and he knew this, so he wasn’t irritated by the fact that Nick asked for endless takes. I loved working with Nick! I would do so many turns and I would get paid more, because he wanted perfection. He also kept many takes. I remember he’d say: “I’ll just hold on to this one. I’m not gonna use it, but I like it.” And then with the modern technology, they started using bits of this take and that take. They were gluing bits together with the old system as well, but it was easier when it was computerized.

 

Iconic dubbing director Nick Alexander.

 

JM: I want to ask you about Frank von Kuegelgen, who in addition to adapting and directing, also did a lot of voices himself. He was great at rapid dialogue and could do so many funny voices, and is a bit of a legend for fans of English dubbing. What are your memories of Frank?

 

EB: Yeah, he was a legend! And also his wife, Sonia De Dominicis, who was a dubbing assistant and then a dubbing director herself. They were a real power couple. And again, Frank was such a gentle guy, and so analogue! I remember he’d come here to my house with his little ARA bag, which was a little canvas bag with all his sheets and things. We would always go pick up our checks in the ARA office, but sometimes he’d come here for some bureaucratic thing we had to do, and he would just hang out. He was a lovely gentleman, and what a professional! He was always honored to be picked to do whatever horror movie or cartoon he was working on, and that stuck with us voice actors. It was always important! It wasn’t just dubbing, it was always an important thing, and I think that’s why he got his aura and why he was president of ARA for so many years. He represented all of us. He was one of the voices, but he was also one of the directors. He was an expat, but he was also living in Monteverde and he was Italian. And he was American. And he was like us! It was a community of people who had so much in common through work and being in silent rooms together for three hours at a time and then having lunch together. We would go to lunch all of us together – the director and the voice actors, and sometimes even the technicians. And I don’t remember whether it was at Fono Roma or International Recording, but one of them had a little café in it, so we would all go down there and have sandwiches or a plate of vegetables or something, and we’d sit like movie stars in Hollywood Commissary and talk about everything else. I remember Nick was, like: “Okay, who’s your boyfriend now? What does he do? He’s a commercialista?” It was these funny conversations, because he has a daughter my age, so he knew how to talk to me. What a funny guy!

But, yeah, Frank was many faces and wore many hats. He was incredible. He would also dub with us, but sometimes, he would do a track on his own because he didn’t want to distract us. That’s how delicate he was. He would do his track on his own, but he actually believed in the chorale in the group working together. If it was a dialogue between two people, he’d put us on the same mike so we could record together. He wanted the interaction. That was his big thing. And then when it became easier to do actors on separate tracks with the computerized system, we kind of lost that. You’d see the scene and listen to it, and then you’d go: “Wait! That’s Steve doing the guy I’m opposite!” “Yeah, he came in the day before yesterday.” It would have been nice to do it together!

 

Long-time dubbing director and ARA president Frank von Kuegelgen in the only picture of him that has yet to surface - from his 1961 high school yearbook!

 

Yeah, Frank was amazing. It was a huge loss when he passed away. It was like losing a relative. Very, very difficult. And same with Nick. I remember Giulia Bernardini, who was bilingual and did a lot of little voices like me, and Cariddi Nardulli, who also acted on-screen and was a child prodigy, and I were buddies and were all working in film already when Nick was not well, and we asked Jane [Nick’s daughter] if we could go see him. She said: “You decide, but it’s not gonna be the Nick you know.” We were shocked to see him so debilitated, and he died soon after, but we wanted to pay our respects to the person who forged us. Because that was our first work. Dubbing was my first job and the first little money that I earned, and being part of a cooperative and signed up to ENPALS, the social security of showbiz! I’m still signed up to that and in some years, I’ll be getting some form of pension through that, because of the projects I did with these incredible people that I had a chance of being in a dark room with. If I think about it now, it’s weird, you know? A child in a dark, quiet, smoky room – people were smoking in the studio back then – with adults, but I never had any uncomfortable situations. All of the people I worked with were real gentlemen! Even Leslie La Penna, who’s a younger generation director. I met his dad too, but he was already sundowning. He came along for a brusio session [the recording of crowd and background voices] where there was, like, ten of us in a room. Those were fun! They were bonding moments with kids my age.

And Gene! Oh, my God, Gene Luotto. What a gentleman! He was really Italian. The way he dressed and the way he talked in Italian – with just a little delicate hint of an English accent. He was one of the directors who would breathe the line in your ear and tell you to not use the headphone. He would just say the rhythm in your ear and then the light turned red and you said it, and he was, like: “Very good. Done!” [laughs]

Gene got the bigger projects. He was the veteran. He did Tinto Brass’ movies, for example, because Tinto Brass only wanted him. And the Taviani brothers wanted him, too, and would say: “It’s Gene or no one else!” And Gene, too, was a little show-offy. He liked the fact that he was some teacher’s pet. [laughs] And when you realize these directors are so sought after that they are celebrities themselves, it’s infectious. You do better and give a better performance because you’re in the presence of not just royalty on the screen, but royalty in the room with you making it better for an English audience.

 

JM: And Gene always worked very closely with his niece Clementina, right?

 

EB: Yes! Was she his niece or his cousin? I forget. Relative, anyway. And they would fight! Oh, my God! They were never completely in agreement sometimes. Gene would say something and Clementina would say: “Absolutely not!” [laughs] Then he’d be, like: “Clementina, you come up here and do it,” and she would do a couple of lines of another role and she would be amazing! Spot on! She was the second set of eyes for the sync, and Gene was confident that she would spot any missed lip sync, because he was focusing on the performances of his voice actors, and she was there as backup to say: “That ‘b’ came a quarter of a second late. Let’s pull it up three frames,” and so on. She was amazing, but they always fought! She looked like she was always in a bad mood, but they loved each other and they were family.

Gene would be at the leggiò – the script stand – and Clementina was sitting at a little table on the side, always hunched over her papers with very little light, so that the rest of us could focus on what was happening on the screen, and she became a hunchback, I think, because of that. Gene always had the big room at Fono Roma or whatever dubbing studio they were using. They even had a sofa and you could have air conditioning in some of them. It was, like: “Oh, we’re working with the pros here!” [laughs]

 

Prestigious dubbing director Gene Luotto as pictured in a 1986 newspaper article on dubbing.

 

JM: And Gene’s son, Steve, was another dubber who had a very young sounding voice and who would often get cast for younger characters.

 

EB: Yeah, he and I were always paired together. He was a little older than me, but not that much, and we’d often work opposite each other as he had a much younger sounding voice than his age, and so did I. Then I started smoking when I was a little older, and that wasn’t good, so I stopped, thankfully. That was like a three-year stint, and I don’t remember which director it was, but he said: “You gotta stop smoking. I can feel it. Your voice is going down and getting deeper. That’s not you. You gotta play kids. I need you to do my cartoons and my young boys!” [laughs] But it’s true. I had a very childish voice, and when you showed me those little video clips of my early work I thought: “Wow! I really did sound like a child!” [laughs]

 

JM: But was that your normal speaking voice, or did you intentionally try to sound younger?

 

EB: No, no! Sometimes, for speed when I was insecure and wanted to rush through a line, I would go even higher! But I wasn’t doing it on purpose, and then directors would go: “Eleonora, down. In the chest!” “Oops! Sorry!” [laughs] No, that was my voice. I think I took that from my maternal grandmother, Giuditta Rissone. She was a theater actress. She married my grandfather Vittorio when she was acting in the theater and she’d been acting since she was basically a newborn. She was put on stage as soon as she was able to stand alone, because it was a theater family that was traveling, and so when she became pregnant herself with my mother, she was, like: “Oh, goodie! I’m not gonna work anymore!” Because she had been working her entire life till she was in her 40s, and then she had my mom late in life, and she was excited that she was no longer acting. She only did a little cameo in Fellini’s 8½ (1963). She plays Mastroianni’s mom, and when she read in the script that Mastroianni kisses his mom on the lips, she went: “Oh, poor guy! I’m an old woman. Why does he have to do that?” [laughs] She raised me when my mom was working a lot, so I spent a lot of time with her. She always had a very high-pitched musical voice, and now that I’m talking with you about it, I’m thinking I must have got my voice from her, because my dad had a very deep voice, and my mom didn’t necessarily have a very high-pitched musical voice. She, too, did not know how to sing. We were not good with notes.

 

Eleonora's grandmother, actress Giuditta Rissone (1895-1977).

 

JM: But for little boy voices, you had to do some tricks, right?

 

EB: For little boys I sometimes had to pitch down, because if not it would be too feminine. So, that was fun. I also dubbed a significant number of animated films, covering a variety of roles in each. I can’t remember any of the titles, but we had a lot of fun with those cartoons, because we would do weird voices. I remember that whoever the director was said: “Let’s do one like this, and then you can do one and have fun with it.” And sometimes, they’d say: “Okay, let’s use the fun one”. But rarely, because we weren’t that good with cartoon voices, or I wasn’t.

 

JM: And then you surely did all sorts of talking animals and stuff, too.

 

EB: Yes, animals and… what was the other one? There was one time I did a cartoon, and one of the directors of the animated film was present in the control booth. He heard me saying something in Italian and asked if I could do a test in Italian, and that was very delicate, because the Italian dubbing industry is a whole other industry. It’s separate, and they are… I don’t want to use the wrong wording, but it’s very, very exclusive! So when this director suggested me to dub in the Italian version, the dubbing director had to be very diplomatic and explain: “She doesn’t do Italian. She only does English voices.” “Why? Because she can’t speak in Italian? I heard her!” “Well, yes, but she’s not part of an Italian cooperative or signed up to any Italian group, so she would be taking work away from powerful voice actors that we don’t want to cross.”

And then there were times where there would be a request to do a little bit of British. Do a little Mid-Atlantic. Which, again, was something that I was taught, because I didn’t know how to do an English accent. I’m not English. I was raised American, so I pronounce water like wah-der. I don’t say waw-tuh. And that was taught, so it was like a little dialogue coaching situation. In fact, many of my voice actor colleagues later went on to be dialogue coaches for movies. Steve did a lot of that. And who else…? Christopher Cruise! He did lots of voice coaching, I believe.

 

JM: Yeah, and a funny thing about Christopher Cruise. I don’t know if you’ve watched the film The Mattei Affair (1972), in which your dad appears. I’ve only ever found it Italian language, but in that film…

 

EB: Christopher is giving the voice of my dad, yeah! And my dad was so upset. He was, like: “That’s not my voice! I sound like a British lord!” And I said: “Yeah, that’s Christopher.” [laughs]

 

JM: And actually, your dad is dubbed by other actors in a lot of his Italian movies.

 

EB: Yeah. I guess he didn’t have a strong contract, and didn’t have ADR in his deal.

 

A little video of Christopher Cruise dubbing Peter Baldwin in Italian:

 

JM: Can you tell me when you guys used to dub? Because Frank and Nick and all these guys obviously did dubbing for a living, but many of the other dubbers had other jobs, right? So, when did the recording sessions take place? Would it be in the day or the evenings?

 

EB: There used to be three three-hour turns a day. From 9 to 12, then you’d break for lunch, and then from 1 to 3, and from 3 to 6. Those were the three turns a day, and I don’t think they used to work on weekends. While I was in high school and until I graduated, I only did afternoon and evening turns. I think at one point I started doing three turns a day – when I was working on some of the bigger projects. But when I wasn’t in school, and maybe just doing classes and studying design, I would do two turns a day for a week, or however long they needed. And sometimes they’d ask which turn you’d like to do, and I would always pick the mid-day one, because that gave me time to do other things. But I was just horsing around, because I didn’t have a job yet. Then when I started working, it was a little tougher to try and find a time that worked for everybody, and I was getting around with a bus and didn’t have a car yet. And Rome is big, busy and full of traffic, and these studios are all over the city – mostly far away from where I lived. There used to be one that I could walk to, and then it closed. I was so upset, because it had been so easy when I could just walk there. But, yeah, there was a lot of flexibility of when to schedule. Unless it was a brusio session. Those you’d join, because that was when everyone was there. I even got to work with Chris’ wife, Giulia Patriarca. She was fun! She had a little bit of an Italian accent, and I loved her way of talking. She was nice, and she would talk to me about her vacations and going to Capri, and I thought how glamorous it was that she was going to Capri. [laughs] And then I met her kids and it was fun! Those were fun times, and a fun job at a time when none of my friends were working.

 

JM: And how did dubbers get booked for jobs? Would the directors call you up personally, or did it all go through Frank in the office?

 

EB: It was Frank through the office. Frank would call, saying that there’s a project and the director is so-and-so, or the director is him, and it’s 15 loops, or if it’s, like, a two-week gig – and that’s when you’d start getting excited – and ask when you were available and what time you preferred. That was how it worked, and then you’d make an appointment and you’d show up. Then it would keep going. If you went long that day, they would add another turn the next day or whenever they needed. I remember Frank told me that if they knew they needed 12 days to dub the whole film, they would take it for 15, so that they had a little buffer in case of delays or technical issues. I’m telling you, it was a craft! Artisan work, but it was like machine work. It was incredible.

 

JM: Over time, your voice changed a bit, and as you wrote to me earlier, you dubbed the female lead in the erotic Tinto Brass film Frivolous Lola (1998), on which Gene Luotto was the dubbing director. That’s a more adult character than the ones you did earlier on, and you do sound a little different.

 

EB: Yeah, but I was also older when I did that part. The dubbing directors were delicate and wouldn’t have asked us to work on sensitive material like that when we were so young.

 

Anna Ammirati in the role of Frivolous Lola.

 

  

JM: Tinto Brass is known to have been one of the relatively few Italian directors to take an interest in the English language versions of his films. Did you get to meet him during any of the dubbing sessions for Frivolous Lola?

 

EB: Yes. He came a couple of times with Gene, but he stayed in the booth in the back. He was creepy if I have to be honest, so I’m glad he remained in the booth. [laughs] But he was very much part of the process, and he was very invested in the English language version of his film. He respected Gene very much and trusted him completely, even if I don’t know how much he understood of the English.

And I also did another Tinto Brass film. Which was the one with Claudia Koll?

 

JM: All Ladies Do It (1992). Or Così fan tutte in Italian.

 

EB: Così fan tutte, yes. I did some integration in that. I think maybe Claudia Koll did her own English…? Because I didn’t do the whole film. I just did little bits that were probably missing – filling in little breaths and laughs and things like that.

 

JM: And that dub was directed by Ted Rusoff. Please tell me a bit about him, because he was quite a character, wasn’t he?

 

EB: Oh, my God. He was a character, yes! And Carolyn [Ted’s wife, Carolyn De Fonseca]! What a duo! She was a smoker and had a very deep voice. They worked together, and Carolyn was Ted’s assistant, and then she would dub voices. Ted looked like a homeless person, with a long, unkempt beard, but he was really funny! When I started working as a script supervisor, I’d sometimes run into him in costume on film sets and I’d ask him: “What are you doing here?” And he said: “I’m playing the priest.” [laughs] He’d be on a break, smoking a cigarette and looking like a bum in a priest costume. It was hysterical. He had an incredible sense of humor and was super raunchy sometimes, but always signorile – very elegant. His English and his demeanor were always so polished. And I remember he told me that he and Carolyn lived in Trastevere – which is like the bohemian Left Bank of Rome – in a huge apartment that other people in the dubbing sala who had been there said was incredible. And then someone else said: “Yeah, that house. Falling apart, but incredible!” And that totally made sense, because there had to have been cigarette butts everywhere! [laughs]

I never got to see their apartment in Trastevere that they got for nothing, because they arrived as expats early on, found this apartment and started squatting, I think, and then they made friends with the landlord and ended up living in very affordable conditions in an apartment that was huge. And in Trastevere, which was the neighborhood where everyone wanted to live, because it’s beautiful. Or it used to be. Now it’s super crowded with tourists and no longer highly sought.

Carolyn was super American. I don’t think she spoke a lick of Italian. [laughs] Or maybe she did, but with a very heavy American accent. She had long painted fingernails and long blonde hair, and if you’ve seen Widow’s Bay, the series on Apple TV, there’s an older character actress there named Dale Dickey who’s amazing. She’s nominated for an Emmy, and has a really raspy smoker’s voice, and the way her character talks and the way she smokes reminds me of Carolyn very, very much!

 

JM: I haven’t watched that series, but I’ll have to look it up now! But Ted and Carolyn are really some of the all-time most emblematic English voices of Italian cinema.

 

EB: You can recognize them always. Always! They did a lot of voices. Not just directing.

 

Super-prolific dubbing actor/director Ted Rusoff.

Carolyn De Fonseca, Ted Rusoff's wife and partner-in-crime.

 

JM: Yeah, and Ted was sort of notorious – at least in the 60s and 70s – for always grabbing the biggest roles for himself when he was directing.

 

EB: [laughs] Totally makes sense! He had the most loops. Sometimes, we would be paid by paragraph or how many lines we had, and sometimes by loops, so there were different parameters of how we would be paid. And when a loop was done, the sala assistant would circle it, so sometimes you would see a hundred little circles on the sheet. There would be one dubber with, like, three, and then the one with 25 loops, that would be Ted. [laughs] Of course, if you’re directing it, you’re gonna keep the bigger role for yourself. Totally makes sense!

 

JM: Did you also work for some of the other directors, like Larry Dolgin, John Gayford and Geoffrey Copleston?

 

EB: Yes, Larry Dolgin I worked for more than once. He had this swagger of the actor, and I think he remembered my dad. They were kind of the same age. I don’t remember what projects I did with him.

I remember John Gayford. He and I dubbed together, but he was doing a voice rather than directing.

Geoffrey Copleston… I remember the name and I think I met him once. Was he the one who was sensitive to earthquakes?

 

JM: [laughs] What!?

 

EB: Yeah, I think that was him. He was the one that could sense an earthquake the day before. At least that’s what he said, and everyone in the room said: “Yeah! Yeah! He does!” [laughs] I think that was Copleston. He lived in Bracciano in the countryside somewhere.

I also worked with Bob Spafford once. He was more like a Santa Claus figure and was older than everyone else. I worked quite a bit with his wife Susan, who was a lot younger than he was, and I even worked with their son.

There was a younger dubbing director, too, named Greg Snegoff. Very American and very athletic. He lives in Puglia, and is a slight conspiracy theorist who kind of wants to be off the grid. [laughs] He’s still around, I’m sure. I worked with him on a few things, and maybe something a little more recent – after my son was born in 2006 – but I don’t remember what it was.

What’s happening with dubbing in English now? It’s all finished?

 

JM: Yeah, that’s the impression I get. Or… maybe not entirely finished, but certainly very, very diminished.

 

EB: Well, they’re mostly all gone. I think when Frank left us, that was it. Because he was keeping it alive and keeping it going somehow. Very sad. I miss them. They were fun people and it was a fun part of my life.

 

JM: How did you and the rest of the dubbers feel about all these movies that you worked on? What was your estimation of them?

 

EB: We never watched the movies. We saw the scenes that we were dubbing, but we never saw the finished product. Maybe the directors did, but we weren’t included in that phase. By then, our work was done. If it was a role that went from the beginning to the end, then you kind of saw what it was like, but we really did not see the whole story, and that was so odd.

 

JM: Did you think any of the films were going to go anywhere, and are you surprised that there are people who are interested in the dubbing of these films?

 

EB: I’m very surprised, because I thought it was almost like a genre that didn’t even have an audience. Sometimes, we would wonder who is actually watching these dubbed films. Because we didn’t know, or have any conversations about the distribution or what happened to the films after we’d finished working on them. The only one that I thought would have some resonance was Speriamo che sia femmina (1986) – or Let’s Hope It’s a Girl – because it was directed by Mario Monicelli, and because it had such an incredible cast, from Liv Ullmann to Stefania Sandrelli. And the young girl that I dubbed in it was Lucrezia Lante della Rovere, my classmate at the Overseas School. She was a VIP because her mom was a blueblood who wrote a gossipy novel called My First 40 Years. I knew Lucrezia since she went to my school, but her English wasn’t good enough, so when they were doing the English version, they needed an American voice and they picked me. And that was Gene directing, I think.

 

Eleonora's school mate Lucrezia Lante della Rovere in Let's Hope It's a Girl.

JM: It’s very interesting that you should mention that film as likely to be going somewhere in its English version, because out of all the films you told me you remembered dubbing in our initial emails, that is the one film that is impossible to find in English. I think probably because it’s considered a more important film, they didn’t include the English dub when it was released on Blu-ray not to long ago, whereas Demons, Phenomena and these other films are all easily available in English.

 

EB: Really? That’s so funny. No, I thought it would go somewhere because of the director. And of course, Quentin Tarantino said that Lucio Fulci and Lamberto Bava were major inspirations, so then everyone wanted to go see those movies again, and they got a second wave because of that. I also got to work with Lamberto as a script supervisor on his film Ghost Son (2007) and the star was Laura Harring from Mulholland Drive. Lamberto did not speak a lick of English. It was so funny when he was directing Laura Harring, and he would give her directions like “BIG FEAR!” or “BIG, BIG HORROR!” The crew and everyone were just laughing! [laughs] There was a little animatronic baby, too. I don’t know the quality of that film, but it was fun to be there on the set.

 

JM: Can you tell me some more about the script supervisor job and exactly what it entails?

 

EB: A film is shot out of continuity. You don’t go in order, you go by location or the actors’ availability, so the scenes are all jumbled. As a script supervisor, you keep track not only of each take and the continuity within the scene, but you also create a sort of instruction manual for the editor to put all the pieces together correctly. You assign slates, so if a scene, let’s say scene 12, is shot by 36 different angles, then you have scene 12, setup 1, take 1, and then take 2, take 3 and all the way to 36 or however many you need. Those slates help the editor to match sounds and camera take, and you tell him where that goes: it goes in this part of the script, this is the camera angle, this is the person talking and this is the person off-screen, and so on. It’s different now, but back when I first started, the editor only inherited all the material halfway through the shoot and then started cutting it together, so the editor was never on the set. Sometimes, he was not even hired while the film was shooting, but only later on. There’s an assistant that puts all the scenes in different bins on the computer, because by then they were editing with Avid, and then the editor starts working with the script supervisor’s notes and the camera logs.

In Italy, the script supervisor also did the camera logs – what scene is being shot on which roll of film. I asked why it is that in the States, the camera department justly does the camera log, whereas in Italy, it’s the script supervisor doing everything. And the response was that when films started and they began doing film crews – with my grandfather was the implied meaning – there was only one person that knew how to read and write, and that was the script supervisor! The rest were very ignorant and could not write a production log. [laughs] So, because the script supervisor was also doing the camera logs, I’d always be asking: “How much film do we have left in the camera? Because I have my stopwatch and I can tell you it’s a three-minute scene. Do we have three minutes?” You have to know how much that translates into in feet or meters of film.

And it was a lot of work, because you’re not only following the continuity and if the actors are, say, smoking when they’re supposed to smoke compared to the wide shot, because if you want to cut from one shot to the other and the cigarette changes hands, then you can’t cut it together – that’s a continuity error. You’re not only looking at that, but you’re also making sure that everyone is saying all their lines, because the director maybe doesn’t understand the language the actors are acting in and will ask: “Ha detto tutto?” – Did he say everything? [laughs]

It’s a big responsibility, and it’s a job that’s a one-person department, so I’d be a guest of the camera truck for my bag sometimes. You also have to maintain a good relationship with the costume department, who do continuity with the costumes. Like, if there’s a stain from scene 12, that stain has to stay from that scene onwards, but if you shoot scene 48 before scene 12, you have to know where that stain is gonna go. So, you have to have a running conversation with the costume department, and the same goes for make-up, for stuff like scarring, dirt, hair, transformations or whatever.

But in the end, it’s always the script supervisor’s responsibility. I remember when I was working on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), we did a huge crucifixion scene. The whole day we did only the master – the wide shot. Seven cameras rolling at the same time, and the widest shot had everybody in it: Jesus and the condemned on the cross; the crowd; the mother, Saint John and the Magdalen at the foot of the cross, and Matera in the background. And they were all moving, because it wasn’t a fixed shot of the three nailed to the cross. Things were happening within the scene, with donkeys coming in, the Pharisees, and we had this and we had that. And finally, it’s: “CUT! Done! Let’s go to lunch!” Then I see one of the little seamstresses looking very pale and coming up to me, shaking and saying: “I have to tell you something. Did you notice that Sergio Rubini (the actor who played the good thief on the cross) was not wearing the little sachet around his neck? I think we have to re-shoot this!” And that was my fault, because I hadn’t seen it, so while everyone’s going to lunch and changing, I go: “Mel… there’s a problem!” and my voice broke. And he was just so nice, and said: “Oh, we’re not shooting that again! I’m gonna paint it in with the computer. Don’t worry about it. When I did Lethal Weapon, I walked in one room with a red shirt, and when I walked out it was blue!” [laughs] So, he was very gracious with that. But, yeah, things like that can happen!

Eleonora with Mel Gibson on the set of The Passion of the Christ.

JM: The Passion of the Christ was an extremely controversial film, and Mel Gibson has later become a rather controversial figure himself, too. What are your thoughts on the film and on Mel Gibson, and what was the atmosphere like while making that film?

 

EB: The atmosphere was amazing! Mel was lovely. I don’t know what happened to him later. He started drinking again. I know he went through a big drinking phase, but he was amazing while he was doing The Passion of the Christ. He knew everyone, and was friendly with everyone. We all loved working on that film! It was a 500-700 person set, on location, and then we went to Rome and Cinecittà, working at the historic Theater 5 soundstage and had real olive trees for the Garden of Gethsemane. It was incredible!

I made some of my closest friends on that film. Some people were converted to Catholicism because they became so invested and such believers. The set was crawling with priests all the time. There were always Jesuits coming in and wanting to make sure that the story was being told right. There was Mass every day. You didn’t have to attend Mass, but it was there if you wanted to go in the morning, because Mel Gibson at the time was very, very religious. But anti-clerical.

I remember my meeting with Mel before I got hired. I was brought in by my colleague Rachel Griffiths, who has sadly passed away, and who was a great script supervisor who taught me everything. She brought me on to the second unit of Gangs of New York (2002) and was really special. She’d moved away from script supervising and was the first assistant director on The Passion of the Christ – for the first part of the film and then she was substituted by someone else because she and Mel didn’t get along. Anyway, she called me and she said: “I think you should be the script supervisor on this film. Bring a resume. The director wants to see you.” But she failed to tell me who the director was, so when Mel Gibson walked into the room, I almost fell over! I didn’t know it was going to be him! I guess I should have known, because that was everything anyone was talking about at the time, but I wasn’t part of the machine yet. I had not done much at the time, so the resume I brought was a one-page Word document with an ad, some episodes of a TV series, a little bit of my dubbing, and some little things. And Mel took the sheet and turned it over, and I said: “Nope! That’s it. It’s only one page.” [laughs] But he just said: “That’s fine. I don’t care what you’ve done. I want to talk to you.” And he looked at me with his piercing blue eyes and started asking me questions. And after a while, he turned to his business partner and said something like: “Well, she was raised in Rome, but she doesn’t go to church and doesn’t like the Pope. She’s just like us! I think we’re gonna hire her!” For a very religious man like him, that was a strange sentence coming out of his mouth, I later thought.

When we were shooting the flagellation scene, which is one of the most brutal, gory and horrific, Dario Argento-worthy scenes to be put on film, he said: “I want people to jump out of their seats and be disgusted, because I want them to understand what it means that the person I believe in was tortured like this. I want it to be shocking to make a point.” And it was shocking, alright! We did 511 camera setups – I still have the number branded in my brain – for that scene, which is, what, a three-minute scene, or maybe even two. 511 different camera angles going at the same time, and I went up to Mel and I said: “There’s no continuity here. There’s blood everywhere! There’s no going back. If you want to use this motion by whipper number 1, then you can’t go wide, because at this point, all of the set is covered in blood! The camera position is wrong and it’s all turned around.” Because there’s a ‘camera language’ you’re supposed to keep in order to not disorient the viewer. And Mel just said: “I’m fine with disorienting the viewer by changing the camera angle if they’re still looking after we’ve ripped all the skin off this man, because at this point, all I’m doing is focusing on the hands twitching with each whip lash.” He already had the idea of how he wanted to cut that scene. So that’s what a script supervisor does. I’m supposed to interpret how the director wants to edit a scene, and make sure he has all the shots he needs for that, and that they all match, because if they don’t, you can’t cut it together.

And on the last day of shooting, we did a big group photo and everyone got gifts, and Mel said to me: “You know, I never saw you take a polaroid.” And I said: “No, I took many polaroids. You just didn’t see me, because I was never in your face.” We always took polaroids for continuity as this was before digital cameras. So, at the wrap party, I gave Mel a big poster with a collage cutout with the entire filming sequence made out of all of the polaroids, and he was very touched. I’ve never done anything like that for any other director or any other project, but we lived together as a crew the longest I’ve ever done. The shoot was supposed to be nine weeks, and it ended up being 20. So, more than double, and we really bonded. It was a very special experience. So many fun people! And everyone in the directing department then went on to having great careers, and all of the actors did well and got gigs because they were in this film. It was such a great crew. So much fun we had!

 

Mel Gibson on set with Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.

 

JM: Yeah, it sounds like it. I’m sure it must have been a lot of fun being on these movie sets, and in the dubbing sala!

 

EB: Yes, and I think the sala was the gateway to me wanting to be on set. I think that’s what sparked it, because I was already behind the scenes by bringing some of these odd characters to American screens. It was fun, and it was a machine that I felt comfortable in, because I started so early and I was lucky enough to be working with such great dubbing directors and amazing colleagues who taught me everything! Somehow, that must have worked its way into my brain to say: “Why don’t you go see how it’s done from the beginning?”

 

JM: But then eventually you stopped working with both script supervising and dubbing?

 

EB: Yeah, when I started working seriously in journalism. When I was no longer employed by someone, but I was my own employer, I had to crack down. And also, there were less requests. I do some dubbing now. Or… not actually dubbing. I do voice overs for advertising with an Italian company called Cat Sound and they’re walking distance, which is great. I remember I got paid peanuts for a two-hour session, doing an ad for a perfume by Gucci. I said two words: “Gucci Garden”. And that was it. But they gave me a contract that gave me distribution rights, and since the ad was distributed worldwide for X, I got a little percentage of that, which I used to pay for a vacation. That was amazing! So, I do a little bit of that now, but very occasionally. It’s not as often or as widespread as the voice acting.

 

JM: One lady who did a lot of dubbing throughout the years was Gisella Mathews. Do you remember her?

 

EB: Yes. I think we did some group dubbings together. She was not a young lady as I recall.

 

JM: No, she wasn’t. She’d been around since the early ELDA days, and she also at one point acted as a secretary and assistant for your grandfather. She helped him with his English for some of his movie roles.

 

EB: Oh, wow! So, she must have been the one who was his dialogue coach for A Farewell to Arms (1957). He had a very hard time with English, and he had big scenes in that film. He plays an alcoholic medic and he’s in one especially dramatic scene where he has a monologue, like: “And because of this! Because of this drink, my hands are trembling in the guts of these young soldiers!” or something like that. Alberto Sordi, the comedian, is in that same scene, playing an Italian priest, and he and my grandfather were very close. They were like father and son. And the family story that goes around is that while they were shooting that scene, Alberto looked up to my grandfather and said: “Ah Vittò, ma che cazzo stai a di'? What the hell are you talking about? I don’t understand!” Because he was speaking in English. And then everyone was cracking up and it took them like an hour to reset, because my grandfather was laughing so much due to his friend making fun of him speaking in English. That was the kind of relationship they had.

But, yes. Funny she didn’t mention that, but she probably didn’t know he was my grandfather.

 

Gisella Mathews and Vittorio De Sica going through a script together.

 

JM: You mentioned being friends with and working with Giulia Bernardini and Cariddi Nardulli. Did they both dub young voices like you, and did all three of you start out around the same time in the 1980s?

 

EB: Cariddi was a child actor with her brother Itaco, who died very young, so she was in the business way earlier than any of us were. I don’t know how much dubbing she actually did, but she was a screen talent since childhood.

Giulia Bernardini, Cariddi and I were friends and all gravitated in the same circles, work and not. When I was script supervisor on The Passion of the Christ, Cariddi was the personal assistant to Mel Gibson. Giulia and I went to the same American Overseas School of Rome. She was also an actress/dubber in the 90s and early 2000s. She and I worked on a film together, The Listening (2006), directed by Giacomo “Jack” Martelli. Giulia played an NSA operative, and I was the script supervisor, but I also played a bit part as an NSA agent.

 

JM: Was that your sole on-screen acting role?

 

EB: Yes, The Listening was my only on-screen role. I was an extra in the party scene in The Godfather Part III (1990), but I only worked one day out of the many they used to film that scene at Cinecittà, so to me it doesn’t count.

 

Eleonora's little bit part in The Listening.

Giulia Bernardini in The Listening.

 

JM: Are there any other big memories from the salas that stand out for you? Something that was very difficult to work on, or something that was especially funny, or anything like that?

 

EB: The memories that I keep are the lessons. The things that I learned with these great professionals, like Lew slowly curling a piece of paper to imitate the sound of biting into an apple. Or how to get the sync right. When you get sync right and you know how to do it, and then you can play on the performance – that was a breakthrough moment for me. That was really special.

The most vivid memories I have are of the latest projects, like doing the voice of Aksinia in Quiet Flows the Don and singing and cradling the body of my dead child, which was terrifying! But what touched me the most was not the trauma of doing that scene while being pregnant, but how Frank was so delicate. I was huge by this point and was really showing, and I really appreciated how considerate he was of me, and making sure I was alright.

So, those are my memories. I want to hold on to those and these incredible people. I don’t want to think of their funerals, and when they all died! I want to think of those fun moments in the salas. The musty, smoky, stinky salas covered in carpeting and Styrofoam! [laughs]

 

JM: I didn’t know they could smoke. Because I spoke a lot with Roger Browne, who was president of ELDA through much of the 1970s, and he told me that smoking in the salas was abolished during his reign.

 

EB: Maybe during his reign, but I mean, Ted smoked! Maybe not in the sala, but there was a lot of smoking. They would even go with the tech in the soundproof booth in the back and smoke there. And over the centuries of smoking in these rooms, the carpeting would just hold on to that stench. But it was the fascination of being underground with older men, talking in the dark! [laughs]

 

JM: Thank you so much, Eleonora. It has been a delight listening to all of your memories.

 

EB: Thank you for your interest. It’s been fun reminiscing!

 

* * *

 

My most sincere thanks to Eleonora Baldwin for her time and her kind help with identifying her various dubbing roles. Thanks also to Lawrence McCormick for putting us in touch.