Voices of the Spaghetti Western - “Death Sentence”

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 “Death Sentence”

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

Cash/Django – Robin Clarke (I) Luigi Vannucchi, (S) Ricardo Solans, (G) Reiner Schöne, (F) Jacques Thébault

Montero – Enrico Maria Salerno (I) Enrico Maria Salerno, (S) ?, (G) Thomas Reiner, (F) Jacques Deschamps)

Diaz – Richard Conte (I) Pino Locchi, (S) José Luis San Salvador, (G) Paul Klinger, (F) Jacques Beauchey

O’Hara – Tomas Milian (I) Massimo Turci, (S) Arsenio Corsellas, (G) Harald Juhnke, (F) Hubert Noël

Friar Baldwin – Adolfo Celli (I) Renato Turi, (S) Joaquín Díaz, (G) Alf Marholm, (F) René Arrieu

Sally – Eleanor Brown (I) Fiorella Betti, (S) Rosario Cavallé, (G) ?, (F) ?

Luigi Vannucchi  (1930 – 1978)

Luigi Vannucchi was born in Caltanissetta, Sicily, Italy on November 25, 1930. His family was well cultured and well-to-do. The family moved to Cyrenaica for work reasons, and after three years returned to Italy to settle in Rome, where Vannucchi spent his childhood.

During the war his father agreed to work in Modena at the Land Registry office. Here Vannucchi brilliantly attended the classical high school and became interested in literature and poetry, graduating at the age of seventeen. At the end of high school, against the advice of his parents, he decided to enroll at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome, graduating in 1952 together with actors of the caliber of Glauco Mauri, Franco Graziosi, Alessandro Sperlì and the then student director Andrea Camilleri;already during his courses he had the opportunity to stand out as a promising actor on the occasion of the end-of-year recitals. Even before graduating, his teachers Silvio D'Amico and Orazio Costa made him debut in the part of Christ in the play “Donna del Paradiso”. He studied Literature and Philosophy at the same time but left in the fourth year to become an actor permanently.

Vannucchi excelled in acting in the theater, films and television so it came as a shock when at the height of his artistic maturity, he committed suicide by ingesting a strong dose of barbiturates mixed with alcohol in his home in Rome, on the evening of August 29, 1978, but the body was found by the maid only the next morning.