Livorno voice of Hollywood: the story of the magnificent four voice actors

Roman, actor son of actors, child prodigy of the stage, was a giant of dubbing, one of the few in Europe capable of taming the complicated gab of Jerry Lewis and that Walt Disney himself thanks in black and white for how he interpreted Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio. He was an easygoing, brilliant man, a little crazy, but very strict – says Luca Ward, his nephew by marriage, who on social media was the first to complain about how our grandfather was so easily forgotten – He married my grandmother Jone after the death of her husband William Ward. She was beautiful and unattainable, he was tender, funny but in one piece. As a voice actor he was a fantasist, a chameleon and a perfectionist. His generation was made up of prose actors, but today you could use a Google translator instead of many voice actors, perhaps technically perfect, but unable to play a part, to give him heart and soul, even due to tight working times and lack of masters. For me a huge disappointment. This is why I always say to kids who want to learn: listen to Carlo Romano, a school on its own. Grandfather Ward remembers the strong hand that shook mine, the red eyes without tears at my dad’s funeral, the very long speech he made to me a few days later and his love for nature: one day I snatched a flower from the flowerbed to bring it to grandmother. He told me: this is not done. He bought a bouquet of flowers and said: bring these to you … It was greens before greens. It tells of a world that no longer exists: Dubbing in his time was a very selective environment where there was enormous rigor. They dubbed in suits and ties and evening gowns, they went to the dubbing room like a gal.

The curious though, almost like a film, is that Romano is not the only Livornese in the Olympus of voices. Indeed Livorno, rebel republic of Rome, natural homeland of dubbing, was a luxury factory for that generation of phenomena that brought Hollywood to Italy. Starting with the oldest, Emilio Cigolithe Pel of the word: he the Clark Gable of Gone with the Wind, the Gregory Peck of Roman Holiday, the Charlton Heston of Ben Hur and John Wayne in all his films. If he wanted to – a secretary of hers confided with a slight exaggeration – he could conquer a woman in three minutes just by talking to her on the phone.

No less legendary George Capecchiclass of 1901, known as Il Barone for its elegancethe deep but very particular voice of Auric Goldfinger the villain of 007but also Orson Welles, Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin. Eugenio, his father, was one of the greatest photographers of the late nineteenth century, one of the few who had Queen Margherita portrayed by him, his brother was a baritone. Giorgio had founded the Filodrammatica Labronica before moving on to the cinema through the Stabilimenti Tirrenia, the best sets in fascist Italy, where Carlo Romano also trained.

Stephen Sibaldi, on the other hand, had graduated from the Nautical Institute of Livorno, but preferred the dark rooms of dubbing to open-air navigation. Becoming the Glenn Ford of Gilda, the Tom Ewell of The Bride and Gabbana, Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire and then Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, Danny Kaye even, once, Gassman, Manfredi and Vianello, the only one capable of taming Louis de Funes’ obsessive and machine-gun gab. Rumors that no one should forget, not even Don Camillo. Livorno don’t forget it…

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