Dubbed in Rome

    Back in 2017, I had the great privilege of getting to know the great dubbing actor, writer and director John Gayford (1933-2021), who spent 40-something years working in the English dubbing industry in Rome. John very kindly agreed to answer my various dubbing-related questions, and I think his wonderful recollections will be of much interest to other fans of English dubbing, so here I present the online conversations we conducted during October-November 2017.   Johan Melle: Hi, John. Thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me about your career. I greatly appreciate that. Now, first of all, I would like to ensure that I’ve correctly identified your voice. I made a little clip from the English version of the film Mark il poliziotto (1975). Can you confirm if that’s you dubbing the voice of Giorgio Albertazzi in this clip?     John Gayford: Yes, what a surprise, confirmed. I’d forgotten all about it, but I adapted the dialog for the dubbing. They’re ...

  For my very first post on this blog, I’m going to try to dig into the history of the English dubbing scene in Rome. Now, if you think that sounds overly ambitious, then you’re right! A comprehensive history of English dubbing in Rome cannot be told in a mere blog post. I am, however, going to do my best to at least get the basics covered by tracing the industry back to its humble origins and taking a closer look at how it expanded, the working methods, some of the biggest challenges faced by the dubbers, the dubbing organization ELDA, and some of the key players – hopefully, in a way that will provide interested readers with a good understanding of how English dubbing in Rome worked back in the golden years of the 1960s and 70s. Before we can fully delve into the history of English language dubbing in Rome, however, it is necessary to first a closer look at the Italian language dubbing practices of the time and their origins.   Italian dubbing traditions Italy is o...