I’ve always been fascinated with voice overs, cartoon voicing — and movie dubbing. Early in sound film’s history, movies studios were trying to figure out how to make a film in one language appeal to viewers who understood other languages. Hal Roach even had Laurel and Hardy re-film some shorts in Spanish (and French) using a few of the original actors, some native speakers and “the boys” doing the story in a tongue they couldn’t even understand. For instance, 1930’s “Blotto” became “La Vida Nocturna” all done by the cast in Spanish and you can watch it on You Tube.
Now dubbing is a fine science. And a delicious example of it can be seen on You Tube where Mary Poppins sings one of the movie’s most popular songs — death metal style. This has more than 1,300,000 views so far:
A personal note. In May 1975, I arrived in Madrid, Spain as a young foreign correspondent freelancer. I first wrote for The Chicago Daily News and later switched over to The Christian Science Monitor, which gave me the super-stringer title of “Special Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor.” My Spanish wasn’t too good, so by November I went to Berlitz — and also picked out a movie that had been banned for many years in Spain and watched it over and over: Charlie Chaplin’s Great Dictator, a sound film. Once dictator Francisco Franco died, the film was released — dubbed — in Spain. I saw the dubbed Spanish version 13 times, and it helped me learn the language (I also wrote features about audiences standing up and clapping for the Monitor and one for Newsweek’s International edition). The dubbed Spanish version was quite good and smoothly produced. I only saw in it English years later.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.