Voices of the Spaghetti Western ~ “If You Want to Live… Shoot”

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 “If You Want to Live… Shoot”

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

Django/Johnny Dark – Ivan Rassimov (I) Pino Locchi, (G)          Christian Brückner

Stack/Stark – Ken Wood (I) Sergio Graziani, (G) Michael Chevalier

Sally McGovern/McGowan – Isabella Savona (I) Serena Verdirosi, (G) Eva-Maria Werth

General Alvarez - Franco Cobianchi (I) Corrado Gaipa, (G) Horst Niendorf

Marlowe - Tom Felleghy (I) Mario Feliciani, (G) Friedrich Schoenfelder

Paquita - Cristina Penz (I) Flaminia Jandolo, (G) Beate Hasenau

Serena Verdirosi  (1947 -     )

Serena Nardi Verdirosi was born on March 23, 1947, in Rome, Italy. She is a voice actress and director of Italian dubbing.

As a young girl she voiced the characters of Scout (Mary Badham) in (1962) and Cathy Brenner (Veronica Cartwright) in “The Birds” (1963), and several times those of the English actress Hayley Mills. She is best known for lending her voice to Sally Field. Shee also voiced, among others, Stockard Channing, Gates McFadden, Kelly McGillis, Goldie Hawn, Teri Garr (in “Tootsie”), Jill Clayburgh and Anjelica Huston. As a child she participated in the film “Totò Fabrizi” and the young people of today, playing the daughter of Aldo Fabrizi. She voiced Diane Baker, the mother of the protagonist Sandra Bullock, in the American thriller “The Net” in 1995.

In May 2007, she won a lifetime achievement award at the fourth edition of the Golden Lectern.

Serena was married to her voice actor colleague Massimo Turci [1930-2023] with whom she has a son Francesco.