Dubbing in Rome
By Johan Melle
May 29, 2026
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).
[To be continued]
