My talks with Roger Browne [Part 1 of 12]

 

Dubbing in Rome

By Johan Melle

May 29, 2026

Since I began to actively research the English dubbing scene in Rome, I’ve had the pleasure of communicating with several former dubbers, and one of the people I got to know the best was Roger Browne (1930-2024). Roger lived in Rome from 1960 to 1980 and enjoyed a highly successful film career with starring roles in numerous Italian peplum and Eurospy films, but throughout his 20 years in the Eternal City, he was also a prolific dubber and even served as president of the English dubbing union ELDA for several years.

When the Italian film industry began to dwindle in the late 1970s, Roger returned to the US, settling with his family in Burbank, California, where he embarked on a new career path as a physical therapist. After around 30 years in that field, he retired in 2012 and made a surprise comeback to the limelight through regular appearances in the YouTube series Elder Reacts and roles in independent films, as well as participating in the convention circuit and actively communicating with fans through social media.

I first got to know Roger in March 2023, when his long-time friend and former dubbing colleague Rodd Dana helped put us in touch. At the time, Roger was 92 and not in the best of health, but his mind was still as sharp as a tack, and even though he repeatedly told me that he had learned much more from me than I was ever going to learn from him, the fact of the matter is that I had the privilege of learning a great deal of invaluable dubbing history from Roger. Having been around for the entirety of the golden age of English dubbing in Rome and served as president of ELDA for several years, Roger had unique insight into the scene, and once we started strolling down memory lane, I think even Roger himself was surprised by how much he was able to remember – about the evolvement and inner workings of the dubbing business, the working methods, the films, and of course his many colorful dubbing colleagues.

[Roger during his Eurospy days in the 1960s.]

 Roger and I stayed in frequent touch via email for more than a year, and throughout that period, I not only got to hear a great many fascinating stories about dubbing, but I also got to know and greatly appreciate the man himself. Always cheerful and eager to help, Roger had a wonderful sense of humor, and almost every email from him came with a funny joke, or a wry observation or pun.

The last email I received from Roger was in June 2024. After that, I didn’t hear any more from him until in October, when his daughter Kelsey wrote to inform me that Roger had quietly passed away with all of his loved ones by his side. I was greatly saddened by this news but took comfort in the fact that Roger made it to the very respectable age of 94 and knowing that he lived each of those 94 years to the fullest.

Now, a year and a half later, I find that I still miss emailing with Roger. I miss his jokes and not being able to run things by him whenever I happen across some new dubbing related information, but I’m also immensely grateful that I got the chance to know him and learn so much from him. Altogether, I received hundreds of emails from him, and I have incorporated much of the information he gave me into various articles I have published on the blog. But there are so many, many more of Roger’s great dubbing recollections I want to preserve for posterity, and so I have decided to publish our full correspondence here as a dedication to Roger and his career.

In doing so, however, I have had to take a few little liberties with the material to make it more presentable. Due to various troubles with his iPad, Roger’s email responses were often rather choppy, with him sending a reply to one thing I’d written and then addressing the rest at a later time. As a result of this, thus our conversations frequently jumped from one thing to another and then back again later on. It was also not unusual that Roger would recount a story, and then later on tell the same story again but this time with several additional details that he had since recalled. There are therefore various instances where I have combined Roger’s answers to be able to present the most detailed account, and I have also re-arranged the order of the topics we discussed in order to give the conversation a better sense of flow and continuity. Additionally, I have corrected spelling where necessary, done some editing for context and clarity, and also left out a few parts which I deemed to be either irrelevant or too personal to include.

If you haven’t already, then I strongly recommend that you check out the career-spanning interview Roger did with the Cool Ass Cinema blog back in 2018. It’s a terrific interview that covers his film career in fascinating detail, and I think my correspondence with Roger serves as a good companion piece to it. Obviously, our talks focused largely on Roger’s dubbing career and his memories of his various dubbing colleagues, but we did also touch on some of his film work and other obscure and forgotten jobs he did to put money on the table, as well as his romance with Edwige Fenech. So, without any further ado, I present my talks with Roger from 2023-24 and hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

 Johan Melle: Hello, and thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me, Roger. Or… is it Bill? I notice some of your old friends, like Rodd Dana, refer to you as Bill Browne. Tell me what you prefer.

Roger Browne: Hi Johan. I use Roger since early days in Rome. Emimmo Salvi, the director of Vulcan, Son of Jove (1962), wanted more clout, so he made me change my name. Rogers is my middle name. I wish I had kept the ‘s’. But how can I help you? I’ll do the best I can

JM: Well, first of all, can you help me to identify your real voice? I’ve not been able to positively identify it, because you were dubbed by other actors in quite a few of the Italian films you made. Do you happen to remember some of the films where you dubbed yourself?

RB: One problem could be that some Rome-dubbed films may have been re-dubbed elsewhere by another buyer or distributor. I dubbed Terence Hill in about ten films in Rome and once in New York, but one or more may have been re-dubbed. Who knows? I would have to see and hear it. In The Fantastic Argoman (1967) I know it’s my own voice in this country because the distributor, Dorado Films, brought me to Portland for a festival of some of their films.

[Roger's most famous starring role was as the title character in the pulpy superhero flick The Fantastic Argoman (1967).]

JM: You were the president of the English Language Dubbers Association (ELDA) for several years. Through old newspaper archives, I’ve discovered that something called the Anglo-American Dubbing Association was started in Rome in October 1949 by Gisella Mathews and Valentino Bruchi. I’m thinking this is what eventually evolved into ELDA later in the 1950s. All of this was long before you arrived, but I was just wondering if maybe you knew any details about the history of the organization. Who were the ELDA originals, and how did it all get started?

RB: I have already learned from you more than you will learn from me! Never heard that English dubbing started in 1949! I do remember Gisella Mathews, older English lady and sala assistant. Valentino Bruchi, I remember the name, but don’t know what he did. I always thought that ELDA started in the late 1950s with a few actors like Sebastian Cabot, Frank Latimore, some English teachers and opera students, and Steve Garrett and Frank Gregory, a writer who held some acting classes. This is tough – I was 30 then, 92 now

JM: If I understand correctly, then you arrived in Rome around 1960. At the time, I think Mike Billingsley was the president of ELDA…?

RB: ELDA president was Bill Kiehl, fringe actor with a deep voice – did Steve Reeves, Reg Park etc. He dubbed with his hands on his buttocks. Better his than mine!

Mike Billingsley was secretary, but ELDA was actually run by his wife Rhoda from her kitchen table, assisting directors, casting and holding auditions – and she had four little girls to take care of, too! It was not legal until 1975. Then we had to start paying taxes and make contributions to Italian social security.

JM: ELDA was not legal until 1975? So that was when it became Associated Recording Artists (ARA), then? Was there any specific reason behind the name change?

RB: ELDA in those days, until 1975, was flying under the radar, so to speak, not legal, not paying taxes nor having money contributed towards our retirement. In the early 60s we did get better organized, had a little office and two employees: Danilo to count all lines dubbed and send out bills, and Chris to man the phone, assist the directors in casting their films, and make work and payment calls to the dubbers.

But it was not all easy; I got mugged once coming from the bank with payroll, something that Frank von Kuegelgen, our treasurer, should have been doing, but he was busy writing adaptations and directing dubbing and I wasn’t generally all that busy. Everyone got paid anyway, from funds that we had built up.

ELDA was also mugged from the inside by an accountant we hired on the recommendation of one of our members. Cost us several thousand dollars, but we couldn’t do anything because we were not yet legal.

When we finally got ARA established, and too bad it wasn’t in 1949 when English dubbing started, we wanted to eliminate all traces of ELDA to avoid a paper trail of unreported income. We changed offices. ELDA mail was not forwarded but picked up by our two-person staff who remained. I was out and I don’t remember if we continued with offices but Frank von Kuegelgen and Leslie La Penna took more active roles. I regret not having the 15 years from 1960 to 1975 count towards my retirement income. But that was life in Roma!

[Note: Although Roger remembered the shift from ELDA to ARA as occurring in 1975, subsequent research has indicated that the shift actually came about three years later, in 1978.]

ELDA often received a credit in the English opening titles. Here from The Last of the Vikings (1961).

[To be continued]