Robert Rietti obit

 

Robert Rietti, voiceover actor - obituary

Actor known as 'The Man of a Thousand Voices’ whose fruity tones dubbed the dialogue of scores of stars

He was not on the list.

As a film and television actor, Robert Rietti, who has died aged 92, was best known for his voice. Although he made occasional on-screen appearances, as in John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) and the ITV series The Avengers, his regular work came from dubbing the dialogue of actors whose command of English was limited or who could not make the final stages of recording a soundtrack.

After the actor Robert Shaw died in 1978, Rietti was called to dub his voice in parts of three movies for which Shaw had not completed the recording. After a diagnosis of cancer compelled the removal of Jack Hawkins’s larynx in 1966, Rietti provided the spoken words for some of his films. In Treasure Island (1972), he revoiced every word spoken by Orson Welles as Long John Silver.

Rietti had a significant involvement in the James Bond series, providing the voice of the secret agent John Strangways in the first, Dr No (1962), and Adolfo Celi’s voice as Emilio Largo in Thunderball (1965). He even dubbed the Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba as Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice (1967) and John Hollis as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in For Your Eyes Only (1981). In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, he also appeared before the camera as one of the staff in a casino.

For much of his career his name was spelt differently, or did not appear at all. He was billed as Robert Rietty on radio cast lists and for some of the many films on which he worked, but when employed to dub his name was often absent. This was a source of some annoyance. “I don’t really understand why,” he said, “because if they want singing in a film and they have an actress or an actor who doesn’t sing well, they’ll revoice them with a famous voice and there’ll be a credit afterwards. But if they revoice a voice for speaking, nobody must know.”

Experts in his business could recognise a Rietti dubbing, but few others could, as he was highly skilled in mastering both voices and accents. In one sequence in the film Waterloo (1970), for instance, he was heard talking to himself four times in the course of providing no fewer than 98 voices, one of them for Hawkins as Sir Thomas Picton.

He was often called upon to supply Italian voices, and also spoke fluent German, French and Russian.

Born Lucio Rietti, in Paddington, west London, son of Victor, a well-known character actor, and Rachel (nee Rosenay), he came from Italian-Jewish stock. His family, originally from Ferrara, had lived in England for 200 years and one of his ancestors was Rebecca Rietti, Benjamin Disraeli’s grandmother.

Rietti made more than 6,000 radio broadcasts, frequently reading his own short stories or tales from the Bible. For more than 20 years he would end my own BBC Radio London, and then LBC, programme You Don’t Have to Be Jewish, with a reading from either the Old Testament or the Talmud. For a number of years, he also broadcast to the US for the BBC in what was billed as an answer to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America.

He had his own company, which was responsible for the complete rerecording of films – such as when a movie with Scottish actors speaking with thick accents had to be made available to the American market. He was nominated for a Golden Reel award in Hollywood for dubbing much of Sergio Leone’s gangster movie Once Upon a Time in America. In 2000, he was nominated for the Bafta special award for outstanding work.

He was also active as a writer. He translated the entire works of Pirandello into English and published a number of anthologies, including the collection A Rose For Reuben: Stories of Hope from the Holocaust (2006). He edited the drama quarterly Gambit.

His Iraqi-born wife, Tina (nee Semah), died in 2008. He is survived by two daughters, Anya and Liana, and two sons, Jonathan and Benjamin.

 He is known for his dubbing work in the James Bond series, Lawrence of Arabia, Once Upon a Time in America, and The Guns of Navarone. He is often credited under the variant name spelling Robert Rietty.

Selected filmography

 

Girls Will Be Boys (1934)

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)

In Town Tonight (1935)

Emil and the Detectives (1935)

Call of the Blood (1949)

Prelude to Fame (1950)

The Black Rider (1954)

They Who Dare (1954)

Stock Car (1955)

Mr. Arkadin (1955)

Checkpoint (1956)

The Truth About Women (1957)

Tank Force (1958)

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960)

Conspiracy of Hearts (1960)

Sink the Bismarck (1960)

The Story of Joseph and His Brethren (1961)

Middle Course (1961)

Time to Remember (1962)

Dr. No (1962) as John Strangways and Superintendent Duff (voice)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) as Majid (voice)

On the Beat (1962)

The Scarlet Blade (1963)

Thunderball (1965) as Emilio Largo (voice)

The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966) as Abraham's Steward

You Only Live Twice (1967) as Tiger Tanaka (voice)

The Italian Job (1969) as Turin Police Chief

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) as Casino Baccarat Official

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

Paper Tiger (1975) as Harok (voice)

The Hiding Place (1975) as Willem ten Boom

The Omen (1976) as Monk

The Message (1976) (voice)

The Devil's Men (1976) as Sgt. Vendris (voice)

No Longer Alone (1976) as Joan's father

Gulliver's Travels (1977) as Reldresal / King of Blefuscu (voice)

Avalanche Express (1979) as Gen. Marakov (voice), replacing the broken English used by Robert Shaw for the character in the original recording.

For Your Eyes Only (1981) as Ernst Stavro Blofeld (voice)

Never Say Never Again (1983) as Italian Minister #1

Madame Sousatzka (1988) as Leo Milev

The March (1990) as Leo Borelli

30 Door Key (1991)

Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1991, TV Movie) as Franz Hoffman

The Sea Change (1998) as Luigi

Hilary and Jackie (1998) as Italian Flunky

Hannibal (2001) as Sogliato