RIP Tony Russel

Tony Russel passed away March 18, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was born Nov. 23, 1925, in Kenosha, Wisconsin and was a former film, stage and television actor. He was noted for having worked in the Italian film industry in the mid-1960s and for his work as a voice actor where he was founder and president of English language Dubbers association (ELDA). Tony Russel lost out to Guy Williams as the star of Disney’s 1957 Zorro TV series but did play the legendary character in his only Euro-western “Behind the Mask of Zorro” (1965). I was lucky enough to interview Tony years ago and he was a delightful man and full of information on film acting in Italy and his participation in founding the Voice Actors Union. This union provided English speaking actors for dubbing Italian films and tried to keep the same English voice used for the Italian starring roles so they would always sound the same.