Voices of the Spaghetti Western – “Thunder at the Border”

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 “Thunder at the Border”

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

Winnetou – Pierre Brice (G) Thomas Danneberg, (S) Enric Puig

Old Firehand – Rod Cameron (G) Gerhard Geisler, (S) Sergio Capelo

Nscho-tschi – Marie Versini (G) Evelyn Gressmann, (S) Marina Vinyals

Tom – Todd Armstrong (G) Randolf Kronberg (S) César Lechiguero

Silers – Harald Leipnitz (G) Harald Leipnitz, (S) José Luis Valero

Michèle Mercier – Nadia Gray (G) Renate Küster, (S) Amparo Mayor

Gerhard Geisler  (1907 – 1977)

Gerhard Geisler was born in Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany on October 21, in 1907. After his training at the State Drama School in Berlin, he received a theater engagement in Bochum from 1930 to 1934. During the war, he had only a few short appearances in German movies. In 1948 he was seen as an actor in the role of Willy in Heinz Hilpert's film production with Heinz Rühmann in “Der Herr vom andern Stern”. In 1966, director Hans Mehringer cast him in the crime film “Der Würger vom Tower” in the role of Dr. Livingstone.

From 1958 to 1971, Geisler also played numerous television roles. In 1962 also in the German series ‘Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf frißt’. In addition, Geisler lent his voice as a dubbing actor to many internationally renowned acting colleagues in over 30 speaking roles over the decades. Among other things, he dubbed Anthony Quinn in a total of 14 films, including The Guns of Navarone and Lawrence of Arabia.

Geisler died in Vienna on 22 September 1977 at the age of 69.