Lawrence Maurice Dolgin was born in San Francisco sometime in the 1930s. A good-looking actor with a squared jaw and chiselled features with bright white smile and a deep masculine voice, it's a bit of a mystery that Larry Dolgin never became a bigger star. He did appear in a fair share of movies, but mostly in small roles, and is primarily remembered not for his actual on-screen work, but rather for his vocal work, as he was one of the most prominent English-language dubbers working in Rome during the 1970s and 80s.
His film debut appears to have been a small but pivotal role in “Hot Rod Rumble” (1957), a low-budget teen drama about drag racing that was shot at Hollywood Studios in two weeks. After that, Larry embarked on a music career, and during the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was second tenor in The Cables, a successful vocal and instrumental group based in San Francisco, California. In 1961, they released the songs "Choo-Choo" and "Midnight Roses" as a two-sided single on the RCA Victor label and toured successfully for several years.
Larry eventually left The Cables to make it on his own, and in 1964, he served as emcee for an all-girl revue named Moulin Rouge. Then, at some point, he ended up in Rome, Italy - presumably in search of acting work. The earliest Italian films he's known to have appeared in are both from 1968: the western “Black Jack” and the crime movie “Quella carogna dell'ispettore Sterling”. In both movies he has fairly large, credited roles, but he didn't land any further significant on-screen roles after that. Instead, he seems to have shifted all of his efforts to working as a dubber on the English-language versions of Italian films - possibly because he found more steady work in that area, with native English speakers being in constant demand for dubbing jobs.
As a dubber, Larry lent his voice to countless Italian films dubbed in Rome, but he also worked steadily as a dubbing actor and director for film sales company Atlas International Film, which was based in Munich, Germany. Atlas dubbed and distributed films from all sorts of countries, including Spain, France, Germany, Greece, Brazil, Hong Kong and the Philippines, and Larry is credited with writing the English dialogue and directing the dubbing of numerous films distributed by Atlas. He still kept on working in Rome, however, so he must have commuted a lot between Rome and Munich, and John Gayford confirmed that Larry was indeed travelling a lot during those years. His deep, masculine voice should be instantly recognizable to most Euro-cult enthusiasts, and some of the many notable actors Larry dubbed into English include Tomas Milian, Giancarlo Giannini, Fabio Testi, Ray Lovelock, Gianni Garko, Antonio Sabato, Raimund Harmstorf, Philippe Leroy, Gabriel Pontello and Jackie Chan.
In the 1980s, Larry began to appear in more on-screen roles, primarily small roles in American productions shot in Rome, but he also had reasonably large roles in some Italian movies such as “Ciao nemico and Caligola” and “La storia mai raccontata” (both 1982), and had particularly substantial roles in TV mini -eries such as ‘L'ombra nera del Vesuvio’ (1986) and ‘Il principe del deserto’ (1991). Other roles, however, were typically small, and several were uncredited
According to an interview with dubbing actor/director Ted Rusoff in Video Watchdog #159 (November/December 2010), Larry came into a nice inheritance in the 1990s and retired to a villa in Sardinia. John Gayford gave a similar account in 2017. He didn't mention an inheritance but told me Larry went off to Sardinia to retire together with his girlfriend, an English dancer/choreographer named Daphne. Indeed, Larry's final known film appearance was in Ancient Warriors, an American action movie shot on location in Sardinia in 2001. John Gayford was no longer in touch with Larry and did not know whether he was still alive or not.
DOLGIN, Larry (aka Lerry Dolchin, Larry Dolgen, Larry Maurice Dolgin) (Lawrence Maurice Dolgin) [193?, San Francisco, California, U.S.A. - ] – model, director, assistant director, writer, film editor, film, TV, voice actor, singer, married to Daphne Dolgin father of three children, member of ‘The Cables’ singing group.
Larry Dolgin’s Euro-western English dubbing:
Black Jack - 1968 (actor and voice)
Four Gunmen of the Holy Trinity – 1972 (voice of Peter
Lee Lawrence)
Too Much Gold for One Gringo – 1972 (voice of Raf
Baldassare)
The Federal Man – 1972 (voice of Giuseppe Cardillo)
A Bounty Hunter in Trinity – 1972 (voice of Antonio
Cantafora)
The Grand Duel – 1972 (voice of ?)
Red Coat– 1975 (voice of Guido Mannari)
Keoma – 1975 (voice of ?)
Scalps - 1987 (voice of Vassili Karis)
[submitted by Michael Ferguson]
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