Friday, July 31, 2020

Spaghetti Western Trivia ~ Singing star Pierre Brice



Like his co-star and good friend Lex Barker, Pierre Brice started a singing career and released several records. As most songs were in German, which he didn't understand at that time, he had to sing them phonetically. He recorded 8 records from 1965 – 1980.

Ich steh' allein / Ribanna
1965
 Du bist schön / Es ist vorbei
1966 • Pierre Brice / Anne Jurka
 Die Nacht beginnt (Fountainbleu) / Lonely
1967
Keiner weiß den Tag / Wunderschön
1967
 Lonely / Die Nacht beginnt
1967
 Winnetou, Du warst mein Freund / Meine roten Brüder
1971
 Faire l'amour / Mehr als alles kann man nicht geben
1976
 Manitou / Freundschaft
1980

Once Upon a Time in Spaghetti Westerns Podcast Episode #11


 Join Jay Jennings any myself as we vacation in Spain and visit the film locations for Sergio Leone’s “Dollar Trilogy”. See now and then photos and hopefully video of the actual film sites where the films were made over 5o years ago and find out what’s left to see and some interesting trivia behind them. We will honor the memory of Don Bruce and the outstanding location hunter the legendary Yoshi Yosada.


Voices of the Spaghetti Western ~ “The Price of Death”


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 “The Price of Death”
[(I) Italian, (S) Spanish, (G) German, (F) French, (E) English]

Mr. Silver – Gianni Garko (I) Giancarlo Maestri, (S) Francisco Valladares, (G) Manfred Schott, (F) Michel Barbey
Chester Conway – Klaus Kinski (I) Virgilio Gazzolo, (S) Ramiro Oliveras, (G) Werner Uschkurat, (F) ?
Judge Atwell – Alfredo Rizzo (I) Roberto Villa, (S) Rafael Torres, (G) Leo Bardischewski, (F) ?
Reverend Tiller – Giancarlo Prete (I) Rino Bolognesi, (S) Ángel Rodríguez, (G) ?. (F) ?
Banker Randall – Luigi Casellato (I) ?, (S) Antonio Requena, (G) ?, (F) Alain Dorval
Doc Rosencrantz – Alan Collins (I) ?, (S) Manuel Bellido, (G) Manfred Lichtenfeld, (F) ?














VIRGILIO GAZZOLO  (1936-    )

Virgilio Gazzolo was born in Rome, Italy on September 7, 1936. He is the son of actor Lauro Gazzolo [1900-1970] and the brother of actor Nando Gazzolo [1928-2015]. After abandoning his medical studies, he made his theater debut in 1960 and began his career playing the title role in Dalton Trumbo's " Il più gran ladro della città" at the Manzoni Theater in Milan, directed by Gianfranco De Bosio. Subsequently he contributed to founding the first historical Roman theater "cellar" (The Teatro dei 101), preferring avant-garde works and authors such as Arrabal and Pinter, Corrado Augias, Giorgio Manganelli. Immediately after the experience of the 101 he returns to the official theater interpreting for the first time in Italy a text by Samuel Beckett "Tutti quelli che cadono", starring with Paola Borboni, under the direction of Beppe Menegatti, at the Teatro Stabile in Florence and at the Milan's Odeon Theater. In 1967 he played Osborne's "Luther", under the direction of Menegatti, which earned him the most prestigious recognition of theatrical criticism of those years, the San Genesio Award for best leading actor, attributed to him in competition with Vittorio Gassman and Tino Buazzelli.

On television he played the role of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1975 miniseries The War at the Peace Table.  In 1973 Roberto Rossellini entrusted him with the leading role in the film "Leon Battista Alberti".

He is still active with carefully chosen and masterfully interpreted roles (recently in Dante told by Boccaccio, or in Ecclesiastes).

As far as dubbing he can be heard as the voice of Robert Woods, Klaus Kinski, Eduardo Fajardo, Gene Hackman and Dan Vadis in various films.

Special Birthdays


Percy Herbert (actor) would have been 100 today, he died in 1992.










Jiri Vrstala (actor) would have been 100 today, he died in 1999.













Oleg Popov (actress) would have been 90 today, he died in 2016. 













Geoffrey Lewis (actor) would have been 85 today, he died in 2015.

Thursday, July 30, 2020

New Book Release: ~ Grandes Temes del Western


Grandes Temes del Western
Authors: Various
Publisher: Dolmen
Country: Spain
Language: Spanish
Pages: 280
ISBN: 978-84-17956-71-4
Available: July 30, 2020

Great western themes: Everything you always wanted to know about western cinema. 

From the very origins of the seventh art to the irruption of television in the mid-late 1950sWestern remained one of the most popular and prolific genres in film history and, without a doubt, one of the favorites of the average viewer. Above all, from the American.

However, those who have reduced it to a childish genre of mere entertainment, with very stereotypical characters and not too complex stories that, in most cases, used to be solved with shots, have never been lacking. In frank opposition to these positions, therefore, this compendium of Great Western Issues is born.

A work that analyzes –and above all claims– the immense wealth of content that, in our opinion, Western cinema treasures. Two large axes will serve as a common thread. On the one hand, the human condition  (love, loyalty, courage, justice, sense of duty, revenge, violence, ambition ...) and, on the other, the national construction of the United States of America (the fight for land ownership, the conflict with the natives, the establishment of the law, the limits of its borders, the economic and technological progress of the country ...).
  
Values, counter values ​​and archetypes that describe the epic stories of its founding mythical space and those of its subsequent revision, this time autumnal and demystifying. After all, as the most devoted devotees proclaim: "The western is life ... and life is western."


YouTube trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5idKAlhUDg&feature=youtu.be

Who Are Those Guys? Flavio Colombaioni



Flavio Colombaioni or Colombaioni as he was sometimes billed is a famous Italian acrobat, circus clown and film actor. He was known for the films "Partirono preti, tornarono... curati" in 1973. Performed in "Kid il monello del west" in 1973. Played Angelo in "Manone il ladrone" in 1974. Performed in "La febbre del cinema" in 1976. Performed in "Saturnino Farandola" in 1977. Played Rocco in "Gli ultimi angeli" in 1979. Performed in "I figli del vento" in 1989.


COLOMBAIONI, Flavio [193?, Rome, Lazio, Italy -     ] – theater, film actor, brother of actor, clown Carlo Colombaioni [1933- 2008], actor clown Flavio Colombaioni, actor, clown Walter Colombaioni, director, actor, clown Alfredo Clay Colombaioni, married to ?, half of the team "The Colombaioni" with brother-in-law Alberto Colombaioni (Alberto Vitali) [1937-2006].
They Still Call Me Amen – 1972 (Rat)
Bad Kids of the West – 1973 (Tuppet)
Halleluja to Vera Cruz – 1973 (Clown) [as Colombaioni]

Special Birthdays


Jacques Sernas (actor) would have been 95 today, he died in 2015.













Nicolau Breyner (actor) would have been 80 today he died in 2016.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Spaghetti Western Location ~ Monastero di San Pedro de Arlanza


Located in the Rio Arlanza valley, on the road from the village of Hortiguela to the town of Covarrubias (to the south), this monastery was one of the most important in Castile. It was founded in 912 by Gonzalo Fernandez, father of Fernan Gonzales, first count of Castile. The primitive Romanesque construction, which began in 1080, was enlarged in the following centuries. This grand complex was abandoned in the nineteenth century, due to the policy of alienating ecclesiastical goods. In 1966, given that some important sequences of the film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” - those of the Langstone bridge - which were shot in the valley of the Rio Arlanza, the monastery, which is located one kilometer south of the place where the bridge was built and chosen as a set to represent the interior of the mission of San Antonio in New Mexico (while as regards the exterior of the mission the Cortijo del Fraile was used in the countryside of Nijar in Almeria - Verdi Cortijo del Fraile).

The filming by Sergio Leone in the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza, which at that time showed signs of the long state of ruin (currently and under restoration) are carried out in a large rectangular room (where the wounded soldiers of which the Franciscan friars are taking care of), in a narrow corridor and in a room representing the cell of a friar in which Blonde (Clint Eastwood) is recovering, from serious burns after crossing the desert (this part of the film is shot in the sand dunes of Cabo De Gata, on the Almeria coast.

From the window of this room of the monastery of San Pedro de Arlanza you can see some crosses on the surrounding landscape, with trees and the shape of a stone building on a hill: it is the ancient church of San Pelayo, located a few hundred meters from the monastery on the road leading to Covarrubias, built on a rocky outcrop in a strategic and panoramic position on the narrow and wooded valley of the Rio Arlanza. Also the sequence of the meeting of Tuco (Eli Wallach) with his brother, father Pablo Ramirez (Luigi Pistilli), and shot in an adjoining room in the monastery of San Pedro di Arlanza.

 
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966)

Special Birthdays


Christian Tramitz (actor) is 65 today.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Special Birthdays


Preben Mahrt (actor) would have been 100 today, he died in 1989.













Rolf Ludwig (actor) would have been 95 today, he died in 1999.










Tom Cotcher (actor) is 70 today.

Monday, July 27, 2020

European Western Comic Books ~ L’Angelo con la pistola


L’Angelo con la pistola (The Angel with a Gun)

There were five published issues that actually contained both copies of SYLVIE: The Angel with a Gun and LOANA: The Venus of the Caribbean. There are therefore five numbers with ten different extensions. The covers were by Franco Picchionni (P. Franco) and were equally divided: two with a western theme (nn. 1, 3) and two exotic (nn. 2, 4).

The comic was published with #1 in November 1971 and ending with #5 issued in April of 1972. The series was published by Editorial Italy in Rome, Italy under the direction of Giuseppe Area. Each issue contained 128 pages with black and white pages and color covers.

Titles
01 (00.11.71) - “L’angelo con la pistola” (The Angel with a Gun)
02 (00.12.71) - “La vendetta di Sylvie” (Sylvie’s Revenge)
03 (00.02.72) - “Il gatto a nove code” (The Nine-tailed Cat)
04 (00.03.72) - “Il leone maculato” (The Spotted Lion)
05 (00.04.72) - ?

Special Birthdays


Erich Dunskus (actor) would have been 130 today, he died in 1967.













Ernst Fritz Fürbringer (actor) would have been 120 today, he died in 1988.













Hilde Sessek (actress) would have been 105 today, she died in 2003.













Elio Scardamaglia (producer, screenwriter) would have been 100 today, he died in 2001.













Elisa Mainardi (actress) would have been 90 today, she died in 2016.











Djordje Nenadovic (actor) is 85 today.













Salvatore Puntillo (actor) is 85 today.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Who Are Those Composers? ~ Marcello Ramoino



Marcello Ramoino is an Italian composer, singer and songwriter. He was born in Italy on October 18, 1925 and was a member of the singing group I Santo California in 1975. Originally called La Nuova Frontiera, the band initially performed in clubs and beach resorts in the Amalfi Coast. In 1974, during a concert in Nocera Inferiore, they caught the attention of Elio Palumbo who helped them sign a contract with the Italian label Yep Record in Rome. At that point, the band changed their name to I Santo California.

Ramoino was composed the music and song for the 1977 Euro-western “Macho Killers” in 1977 and the song ‘El Macho’ sung by Sammy Bardot.

Marcello died in Rome, Italy on December 11, 1989.


RAMOINO, Marcello [10/18/1925, Italy – 12/11/1989, Rome, Lazio, Italy] – composer, songwriter, singer, member of the group ‘
I Santo California’.
Macho Killers – 1977
     Song: “El Macho” sung by Sammy Bardot

Special Birthdays


Osiride Pevarello (actor, stuntman) would have been 100 today, he died in 2016.








Susan George (actress) is 70 today.


Saturday, July 25, 2020

RIP John Saxon


One of the good guys John Saxon died today July 25, 2020. He was 83. His portrayal of the brutal Mexican bandit opposite Marlon Brando in “The Appaloosa” (1966) earned him a Golden Globe, and he had a recurring role on ABC's ‘Dynasty’ as Rashid Ahmed, a powerful Middle East tycoon who romanced Alexis Colby (Joan Collins). And on another1980s primetime soap, CBS' ‘Falcon Crest’, he played the father of Lorenzo Lamas' character. Saxon was such a good actor Burt Lancaster had him removed from “The Unforgiven” because his mere presence and acting were stealing scenes from Lancaster. He’s remembered by many of us for his roles in “Joe Kidd” (1972) as Luis Chama and “Enter the Dragon”  (1973) as Roper. John appeared in three Euro-westerns: “I Came, I Saw, I Shot” (1968) as Clay Watson; ‘Lucky Luke’ (TV) (1992) as the Black Sheriff and “Jonathan of the Bears” (1994) as Fred Goodwin.

National Day of the American Cowboy


Spaghetti Western Locations for “Day of Anger”


We continue our search for filming locations for “Day of Anger”. The scene shifts to Talby’s men playing cards and discussing Scott Mary’s wounded arm. They say when the bullet was removed the doctor had to cut a muscle and it has affected his aim. They say when gunfighters get old or can’t shoot they become a legend like Doc Holliday. Slim says if Scott Mary continues to be paralyzed they say he could light a match with his gun at 10 paces. Just the Slim draws a match, a gunshot sounds which lights the match. They all look and Scott Mary is standing at the bar and just fired that shot. He walks off the distance and it’ well beyond 10 paces. Talby comes downstairs from his room and orders champagne and tells Scott they have to celebrate. Talby asks how Scott is and he draws his pistol and says he can take care of himself. Talby tells him he’s fast than before. They toast to Scott’s recovery and he asks who the new marshal is. Talby reluctantly tells him it is Murph Allan Short. Scott tells Talby he owes no one in Clifton a thing but he’s indebted to Murph. 

 
This scene was filmed at a Cinecitta sound stage, Rome, Italy.



For a more detailed view of this site and other Spaghetti Western locations please visit my friend Yoshi Yasuda’s location site: http://y-yasuda.net/film-location.htm and Captain Douglas Film Locations http://www.western-locations-spain.com/

Friday, July 24, 2020

RIP Roberto Draghetti


The world of Italian voice actors must bid farewell to one of its great interpreters. On the night of July 24, 2020, a heart attack struck the well-known voice actor and actor Roberto Draghetti, cutting him off at just 59 years old. Draghetti would have turned 60 next month. Brother of the actress Francesca Draghetti, he has been working in the world of dubbing for a long time, ranging between cinema and TV series, both live action and animation. He was the Italian voice of Noah Emmerich and Idris Elba, but also of Mickey Rourke in Sin City. He has also lent his talent several times to actors of the caliber of Terry Crews, Josh Brolin, Jean-Cloude van Damme. He was the Italian voice of Dwight Yoakam in “Bandidas” (2006), Mickey Rourke in “Dead in Tombstone” (2013), Ben Hall in “White Fang” (2018).

Once Upon a Time in Spaghetti Westerns #10

Join Jay Jennings and myself today at High Noon PST as we interview authors Lee Broughton, Ulrich Bruckner and Howard Hughes and get their views on Spaghetti westerns and insights into the genre.


Cassy


Onkel Toms Hütte – German title
La Case de l'oncle Tom – French title
La capanna dello zio Tom – Italian title
Cica Tomina koliba – Yugoslavian title
La cabaña del tío Tom – Argentinean title
Cry Sweet Revenge – Australian title
A Cabana do Pai Tomás – Brazilian title
Onkel Toms hytte – Danish title
De negerhut van oom Tom – Dutch title
Orjien maa – Finnish title
Setä Tuomaan tupa – Finnish title
I kalyva tou barba Thoma – Greek title
Tamás bátya kunyhója – Hungarian title
アンクル・トム – Japanese title
Chata wuja Toma – Polish title
A Cabana do Pai Tomás – Portuguese title
Хижина дяди Тома – Russian title
La cabaña del tío Tom – Spanish title
Onkel Toms stuga – Swedish title
Kamçılı Medeniyet – Turkish title
Cassy – U.S.A. title
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – U.S.A. title

A 1975 German, French, Italian, Yugoslavian film co-production [Melodie Film, Central
     Cinema Company Film (CCC) (Berlin), Debora Film, (Rome), Sipro Avala Film
     (Belgrade)]
Producer: Aldo V. Pinelli (Aldo von Pinelli)
Director: Géza Radványi (Géza von Radványi)
Story: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Screenplay: Fred Denger, Géza von Radványi
Cinematograph: Heinz Hölscher [Eastmancolor, Superpanorama 70]
Music: Peter Thomas
     Song: “Old Man River” – Ertha Kitt
Running time: 170 minutes

Cast:
Cassy – Olive Moorefield
Simon Legree – Herbert Lom
Uncle Tom – John Kitzmiller
Topsy – Rhet Kirby
Saint Claire – O.W. Fischer
Eliza – Catana Cayetano
Little Eva - Gertraud Mittermayr (Michaela May)
Harriet -  Mylène Demongeot
Mr. Shelby – Charles Fawcett
Mrs. Shelby – Vilma Degischer
George Shelby – Thomas Fritsch
Virginia – Bibi Jelinek
Sambo – George Goodman
Dinah - Juliette Gréco
Harris – Harold Bradley
Mrs. Saint Claire – Eleonora Rossi Drago
Napoleon – Aziz Saad
Andy – Harry Tamekloe
Dolph – Felix White
Uncle Tom’s mama – Dorothee Ellison
Aunt Ophelia – Erika von Thellmann
Melissa – Mary ann Jenson
Quaker - Heinz Hölscher
Narrator – Jeffrey Hunter (Henry McKinnies Jr.)
With; Milan Bosiljcic (Milan Bosiljcic-Beli), Marie-France Dousset, Andrej Gardenin, Jovan Janicijevic (Jovan Janicijevic-Burdus), Nikola Popovic, Viktor Starcic, Claudio Gora, Quaker -  


Story: Géza von Radványi “Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1965) resurfaced for a one week run with the title “Cassy” in November of 1975. This G-rated film was subsequently acquired by distributor Sam Sherman, who hired Al Adamson to shoot new sex and violence scenes for the 1977 R-rated re-release as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and later as “White Trash Woman”.

[Special thanks to Michael Ferguson for bringing me this rendition of Uncle Tom's Cabin to my attention.]