Spaghetti Western Voices – “Any Gun Can Play”

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 “Any Gun Can Play”

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

Clayton – Edd Byrnes (I) Pino Locchi, (S) Rafael de Penagos, (G) Hans Clarin, (F) Dominique Paturel

The Stranger – George Hilton (I) Giuseppe Rinaldi, (S) Francisco Valladares, (G) Rainer Brandt, (F) Bernard Woringer

Monetero – Gilbert Roland (I) Renato Turi, (S) Julio Núñez, (G) Arnold Marquis, (F) André Valmy

‘Guapa’ – Stefania Careddu (I) Rita Savagnone, (S) María Luisa Rubio, (G) Beate Hasenau, (F) ?

Colonel Jose Huerta - José Torres (I) Carlo D'Angelo, (S) ?, (G) Peter Schiff, (F) ?

Lawrence Blackman – Gerard Herter (I) Gianrico Tedeschi, (S) ?, (G) Friedrich W. Bauschulte, (F) ?

Hans Clarin  (1929 – 2005)

Hans Joachim Schmid was born in Wilhelmshaven, Lower Saxony, Germany on September 14, 1929. Clarin became known to a wide audience in the 1960s as the German dubbing actor of Kookie (Edward Byrnes) in the successful American television series ‘77 Sunset Strip’. He is at least as well known as the voice of Pumuckl, to whom he lent his voice on the radio, on television and also in radio plays for almost 40 years.

In 1969, he voiced the narrator and Commander Tex Terry in the radio play ‘Spaceship UX3 Answers Not’ as the narrator. In 1980, he also spoke all the dialogues as the narrator in the Polish-Austrian puppet animation series ‘Die Moomins’. He also voiced the title role for the radio play records and cassettes Hui-Buh – Das Schlossgespenst as well as the character Asterix in the Asterix series (from 1986 to 1992 the first 29 comic volumes were published as radio plays). Hans Clarin also appeared in the episode ‘Gekaufte Spieler’ (55) of the radio play series ‘Die drei Fragezeichen’. In the radio play series ‘TKKG’ he appeared in episodes 62 and 81 as well as in the series ‘Larry Brent’ in episode 15, ‘Demon Spawn’. In the series ‘New Stories of Pumuckl’, Clarin's voice appears again with ‘Pumuckl’, but this time via AI speech synthesis.

Clarin died in Aschau im Chiemgau, Bayern, Germany on August 28, 2005. He was a month shy of turning 76.