Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Voices of the Spaghetti Westerns ~ “No Room to Die”


As we know most of the Euro-westerns were co-productions from Italy, Spain, Germany and France which incorporated British and American actors to gain a worldwide audience. The films were shot silent and then dubbed into the various languages where they were sold for distribution. That means Italian, Spanish, German, French and English voice actors were hired to dub the films. Even actors from the countries where the film was to be shown were often dubbed by voice actors for various reasons such as the actors were already busy making another film, they wanted to paid additional salaries for dubbing their voices, the actor’s voice didn’t fit the character they were playing, accidents to the actors and in some cases even death before the film could be dubbed.

I’ll list a Euro-western and the (I) Italian, (S) Spanish, (G) German and (F) French, (E) English voices that I can find and once in a while a bio on a specific voice actor as in Europe these actors are as well-known as the actors they voiced.














Today we’ll cover “No Room to Die
[(I) Italian, (S) Spanish, (G) German, (F) French, (E) English]

Anthony Steffen – Johnny Brandon – (I) Anthony Steffen, (S) ?. (G) Gert Günther Hoffmann
William Berger – Everett ‘Bible’ Murdock – (I) ?, (S) ?, (G) Gerd Martienzen
Nicoletta Machiavelli – Maya – (I) Nicoletta Machiavelli, (S) ?, (G) ?
Riccardo Garrone – Mr. Fargo – (I) Riccardo Garrone, (S) ?, (G) Heinz Petruo
Cerockee – Franco Ukmar – (I) Franco Ukmar, (S) ?, (G) Reinhard Kolldehoff
Brandon’s partner – Mario Brega (I) Mario Brega, (S) ?, (G) Hans-Dieter Zeidler















Heinz Petruo  (1918-2001)

Heinz Petruo was bon June 11, 1918 Heinz started his career as an actor during WWII where he was taken prisoner by the Soviet Union and suffered serious injuries to his face from a branch, which is why he did not work as a film actor after his return to Germany. Instead, he started as a radio speaker, initially primarily in radio plays. Beginning in 1951 he worked as a freelancer for RIA Berlin and Bundestag debates together. since 1954 he worked there until his retirement in 1981 as the news anchor at RIAS and developed along with his announcing Here is Rias Berlin - a free voice of the free world to one of the best-known radio personalities on the border of East and West Germany, whose everyday co-operation he commented on for years over the radio. He always ended the news with the words: You heard the news spoken by Heinz Petruo.

In the 1950s, he appeared infrequently in film and television and played minor roles in the Edgar Wallace - crime novels “The Dog by Blackwood Castle” and “The Zinker” as well as the police series “Direction City”.

Along with his distinctive deep voice, he developed into one of the busiest voice actors of his time. Between 1953 and 1999 he dubbed hundreds of productions internationally famous fellow actors such as Lee van Cleef, Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery, Burt Lancaster, Lloyd Bridges, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Richard Harris, Christopher Lee, Robert Shaw, Max von Sydow, Lino Ventura, Richard Widmark and Ricardo Montalbán. He also achieved great popularity as a voice actor through the role of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” trilogy by George Lucas.

His son Thomas Petruo also worked as an actor and voice actor. His granddaughter Vanessa Petruo became known as a singer through the girl group No Angels that emerged from a casting show and also works as an actress (among others in the RTL series ‘Wilde Engel’ and in the German comedy ‘Wo ist Fred?’ and as a voice actress in several films.


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