Voices of the Spaghetti Western - “The Man With the Long Gun”

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.

Today we’ll cover “The Man With the Long Gun”

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

Winnetou – Pierre Brice (S) Luis Carrillo, (G) Thomas Eckelmann, (F)

Old Shatterhand – Lex Barker (S) Antolín García, (G) Gert Günther Hoffmann, (F)

Mabel Kingsley – Karin Dor (S) María del Puy, (G) Karin Dor, (F)

Murdock – Rik Battaglia (S) José Guardiola, (G)   Rolf Schult, (F)

Sam Hawkens – Ralf Wolter (S) Francisco Arenzana. (G) Ralf Wolter, (F)

Lord Castlepool – Eddi Arent (S) Víctor Ramírez, (G) Eddi Arent, (F)

Captain Cummings – Clarke Reynolds (S) Victor Agramunt, (G) Claus Jurichs

Luis Carrillo  (1935 – 2019)

Luis Martín Carrillo was born Almeria, Spain on May 15, 1935. From a very young age, he felt inclinations towards the world of acting; And that's where he began doing theater and radio -as an announcer and actor in serials-. But the big step was taken in Madrid, where he moved in the mid-1950s to join the cast of actors of Radio Nacional -where he would coincide, for example, with an incipient Luis del Olmo-. Even so, he does not leave his facet as an actor and participates in "Estudios Uno". In the group of actors, there were also dubbing actors, such as José María del Río, who recommended that he try dubbing, but it was not until he did the narration for a television series, starring Jesús Puente, that he was seriously proposed to do dubbing; it was because they asked Jesús Puente about the boy who had played the narrator, to which he replied that he did it well; then, Hipólito de Diego artistic director of "Sincronía", asked Carrillo to present himself to the studio. So he did: He applied and was hired immediately. From then on, from the early 1950s until his death, he developed a prolific career as an actor and dubbing director. He was also artistic director of the dubbing studios "Cinearte" and "Arcofón", where he worked as a contract.

After more than 50 years of dubbing, he voiced countless different actors: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Peter Sellers, Chico Marx, Jack Lemmon, Steve McQueen, Cary Grant, Peter Falk, Christopher Plummer, George Segal, Gregory Peck, Jack Nicholson, Walter Matthau, Warren Beatty, Tom Berenger, Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier, Spencer Tracy, Peter Boyle, Charles Bronson, François Truffaut... Despite all the actors he dubbed, he considered that the dubbing should be anonymous, since the actor who is on the screen is the most important. He played more than 1,500 roles.

Luis Carillo died in Madrid on September 12, 2019, he was 84 years old.