Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Voices of the Spaghetti Western - “In a Colt’s Shadow”

 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 be 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 “In a Colt’s Shadow”

[(I) Italian, (S) Spanish, (G) German, (F) French, (E) English]

Steve Blaine - Stephen Forsyth (I) Giuseppe Rinaldi, (S) Manuel Cano, (G) Thomas Eckelmann

Duke Buchanan - Conrado Sanmartin (I) Emilio Cigoli, (S) Arsenio Corsellas, (G) Arnold Marquis

Susan - Anne Sherman (I) Vittoria Febbi, (S) Rosa Guiñón

Jackson - Franco Ressel (I) Bruno Persa, (S) Rogelio Herrnandez, (G) Harry Wüstenhagen

Sheriff - José Calvo (I) Giorgio Capecchi, (S) Rafael Luis Calvo, (G) ?

Burns - Franco Lantieri (I) Pino Locchi, (S) ?, (G) Gerd Matienzen,

Buck - Graham Sooty (I) Eugenio Galadini, (S) Jesús Puche, (G) ?








Rogelio Herrnandez  (1930 – 2011)

Rogelio Hernández Gaspar was born in Barcelona, Spain on December 25, 1930. He was a Spanish actor and dubbing director, dean in the Barcelona sector, where he began in the trade in 1953, alternating dubbing and acting.

One of his first major roles was as the voice of Jeffrey Hunter in John Ford's classic “The Searchers” dubbed in Madrid, at the time Rogelio lived there. In 1960 he settled permanently in Barcelona, where he began an extensive career as a dubbing actor that would last almost half a century.

In the 1960s Rogelio would be the ideal and the most requested to dub actors of the stature like Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Michael Caine or Jack Lemmon, actors that Rogelio would continue to dub during the following decades, especially the first three. He would also double actors such as Errol Flynn, Cary Grant and Montgomery Clift.

In the 1970s and 1980s, in addition to dubbing Caine, Brando and Newman, he lent his voice to secondary actors, such as Bruce Dern, Roy Scheider, James Caan or Robert Duvall. Highlights his dubbing of Peter Sellers, the comic inspector Clouseau in the saga “The Pink Panther”.

In 1981 he began to dub Jack Nicholson in the film noir thriller directed by Bob Rafelson “The Postman Always Calls Twice,” thus becoming another of his regular actors until his retirement.

He was also the Spanish voice of the notorious serial killer "Scorpion," played by Andrew Robinson in Don Siegel's 1971 thriller “Dirty Harry” and starring Clint Eastwood.

The list of actors who regularly lent his voice is very long: Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Gene Wilder, Bruce Dern, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Peter O'Toole, Cary Grant, James Caan, Robert Duvall, John Cassavetes, Montgomery Clift, John Cleese, Tony Curtis, James Cromwell, Vittorio Gassman, Burt Reynolds, Giuliano Gemma, Giancarlo Giannini, Jack Lemmon, Richard Harris, Klaus Kinski, Martin Landau, Oliver Reed, Peter Sellers, Roy Scheider, George Segal, Harry Dean Stanton and Don Stroud,

On February 1, 1986Hernández was honored in Barcelona at the ceremony of the Golden Lecterns of La gran Noche del doblaje, where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2007, after serious vision problems, Rogelio retired from dubbing after working in the dubbing of more than 1500 films. He died in Barcelona on December 31, 2011, at the age of 81, as a result of kidney cancer.

His wife, Rosa Guiñón and his daughter Rosa María Hernández are also dedicated to dubbing.


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