Voices of the Spaghetti Western – Savage Gringo

 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 “Savage Gringo”

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

Ringo/Nebraska – Ken Clark (I) Sergio Rossi, (G) Gert Günther Hoffmann

Kay Hillman – Yvonne Bastien (I) Noemi Gifuni, (G) Margot Leonard

Bill Carter – Piero Lulli (I) Antonio Giudi, (G) Jürgen Thormann

Lou Felton – Renato Rossini (I) Renato Izzo, (G) Horst Niendorf

Marthy Hillman – Alfonso Rojas (I) Giorgio Piazza, (G) Martin Hirthe

Sheriff Bert – Livio Lorenzon (I) Mario Bardella, (G) Arnold Marquis

Antonio Giudi  (1927 – 2013)

Antonio Giudi was born Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy on October 28, 1927. Guidi began a career of acting in the 1950s. He originally wanted to become an architect but he did not pursue that vocation. He worked for two years at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, then he became a stage actor. In addition, he also worked on radio and screen. He made his first ever film appearance in “The Archangel” starring Vittorio Gassman and on television, he made his debut on ‘I legionari dello spazio’.

Guidi was also a professional voice actor. He was the official Italian voice of Peter Ustinov as well as dubbing Peter Falk and Dominic Chianese in most of their work. He was internationally renowned for performing the Italian voice of Lieutenant Colombo (portrayed by Peter Falk) in the last two seasons of ‘Columbo’ since the death of Giampiero Albertini in 1991. He also voiced Prince John in the Italian-Language version of the 1973 animated film “Robin Hood”. After finishing his voice work on Colombo, Guidi retired in 2004, effectively ending his career.

Guidi died in Bergamo on 17 October 2013, eleven days before his 86th birthday.