Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Happy 80th Birthday Sergio Graziani

Sergio Graziani was born on November 10, 1930 in Udine, Italy. He’s been active as an actor and dubber since the early 1960's. He’s best remembered as the Italian voice of Donald Sutherland, Peter O’Toole and Terence Hill. His first western dubbing was as the Italian voice of Benito Stefanelli in “Fistful of Dollars” (1964). He was Terence Hills Italian voice in “God Forgives... I Don’t (1967), “Ace High” (1968), “Boot Hill” (1969), and “Trinity Sees Red” (1970). He was also the Italian voice of James Mason in “Bad’s Man River” (1971), George Hilton’s in “A Man Called Invincible” (1973), and Anthony Steffen in “Dallas” (1974). Sergio was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Grand Prix International Dubbing convention in 2008. Today we celebrate Sergio Graziani’s 80th birthday.

4 comments:

  1. Did one dubber ever dub multiple voices in one film? Or did the unions guarantee that each character had to have a seperate dubber?

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  2. Yes, I've seen one dubber do multiple dubbings in the same film. Not of leading actors but maybe a lead actor and a small character role where the person has little dialogue. I'm sure the voice dubber's have various dialects or accents that they use so changing voices wouldn't be a problem and the audience wouldn't be able to tell it was the same dubber. I think it was rare one dubber did one actors voice their entire career. Re-releases were usually dubbed by another actor and even guys like Lee Van Cleef, Terence Hill, Bud Spencer and Clint Eastwood did not have the same voice dubber for every movie they made. I'm sure they tried to get the same dubber but it didn't always work out.

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  3. I do know that, whether through actors' contracts or studio demands, an effort was made to have major stars dubbed by one person for every film. I read that somewhere, I think. I know I've heard the same voice used for Terence Hill in quite a few films. What sucks is when a well-known American actor shows up with an unfamiliar voice dubbed (eg. James Coburn in A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die). Who dubbed Gian Maria Volonte in A Fistful of Dollars? I've heard that voice often in Spaghetti Westerns.

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  4. Tony Russel was one of the union organizers who ran a dubbing studio in Rome. He contracted a specific dubber for a specific star actor so there voices always sounded the same. If the film was dubbed in New York for U.S. release he had no control over this so sometimes the voices varied.

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