I watched GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS last night for the umpteenth time and I got to wondering which films would qualify as the first foreign films dubbed in English for theatrical release in the U.S. I’m sure there were plenty of Italian films released in English way before GODZILLA. I remember Rossellini’s STROMBOLI (1950) being on TV when I was a kid and it was in English. Did it get released theatrically that way? I know that LA STRADA (1954) had a dubbed version, which helped because it used Anthony Quinn’s and Richard Basehart’s own voices, while they were dubbed by Italians in the Italian version. I know that Brigitte Bardot movies often got shown in dubbed versions in the late 1950s.

What about things like OPEN CITY, BITTER RICE and SENSO? What about French films in the 1930s? Was GRAND ILLUSION ever dubbed? RULES OF THE GAME? Countless other Renoir films?

I did a Google search and turned up a book called “Foreign Films in America,” by Kerry Segrave. But the only mention of an early dubbed film I could find in the pages they showed is a French documentary called CLOISTERED that was released in 1936 by RKO. Not quite what I’m seeking. When did the practice begin as a way of making foreign films palatable for a wide audience in the U.S.? Did it really only begin with the Godzilla, Hercules and Brigitte Bardot films, or was there an earlier wave of films given this treatment? When did arthouse films start getting regularly dubbed and when did more popular genres start getting regularly dubbed?

Anyone?

Thanks.

This is an excellent question, and something I myself was studying earlier this year while writing a revised edition of my book A CRITICAL HISTORY AND FILMOGRAPHY OF TOHO'S GODZILLA SERIES.

As it happens, you're asking the question backwards--GODZILLA was dubbed because that was the prevailing practice for foreign films in the US at the time. Subtitling foreign films became common (for arthouse titles) only later. OPEN CITY, PAISAN, and BICYCLE THIEF were all dubbed in English for US release--and in fact they were distributed by Joseph Levine, the guy who produced the Americanized GODZILLA TOO.

Subtitles remained rare until the 1960s when Bryant Halliday founded Janus Films and started building the arthouse scene we know today.

David Kalat

With all due respect, David, the documentation shows that foreign films shown in the U.S. were routinely subtitled long before GODZILLA. A quick check of New York Times film reviews from the period in question confirms this. Subtitles are specifically mentioned in reviews of the following films:

LA KERMESSE HEROIQUE (1936, France)
OPEN CITY (1946, Italy)
THE WELL-DIGGER’S DAUGHTER (1946, France)
SHOESHINE (1947, Italy)
THE BICYCLE THIEF (1949, Italy)
RASHOMON (1951, Japan)
GATE OF HELL (1954, Japan)

Which doesn't mean they didn't get dubbed in English for wider release outside of New York and other major cities where arthouses thrived. But I'm inclined to think that was pretty rare unless I can find some documentation confirming the wider practice of English dubbing at that time.

Also, going back to the book I mentioned, Foreign Films in America by Kerry Segrave, I find these relevant quotes from the chapter on the 1930s:

“Some international executives felt the time was then right to import dubbed foreign films into America; as late as 1936-37 virtually all were subtitled.”

“Most distributors were releasing those French pictures with English subtitles and with the titling done in New York. Experiments in dubbing them into English were not successful, said the distributors.”

The war curtailed efforts to bring foreign films to the U.S. and I couldn't find any more relevant quotes from the few pages of this book that were made available by Google.

Also, I asked an older friend of mine about this and he recalls seeing a subtitled French movie called JUSTICE IS DONE in 1953 in a neighborhood theater in Newark, New Jersey. I asked him what he remembered as the earliest foreign films to be dubbed in English and he cited the Brigitte Bardot films of the late 1950s.

Now I'm really hoping someone else will weigh in on this topic and provide some additional documentation to help clarify this.

I used to have a print of the original dubbed version of OPEN CITY, and that is still the only version of that film I've ever seen. In the material I found on Joseph Levine, I have it that BICYCLE THIEF and PAISAN were originally shown dubbed in the early 1950s, and only converted to subtitled versions later.

Fritz Lang's TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE (1932) first appeared in the US in 1952, dubbed.

There were technical issues that compromised the physical craft of subtitling films, and it wasn't until better film stocks and optical printing techniques came along that it was even possible to produce subtitled versions that didn't seriously degrade the image. Here is a link to more on that issue:
www.transedit.se/history.htm

I don't dispute that subtitled films were in existence in the 1930s--indeed the link above cites several notable ones. My point was only that the dichotomy we now take for granted, dividing "arthouse" subtitled fare from populist dubbed fare, evolved later once the subtitled arthouse market came into being in the 1960s--and that GODZILLA was dubbed at a time when most (but admittedly not all) foreign films were also dubbed.

But, I freely admit my understanding of this could be distorted by incomplete research or mistaken interpretation on my part. I would love to know more, to enhance or even contradict what I thought I knew, if there is more information that can be brought to this debate.

Thanks again Brian for opening this subject thread--

David Kalat

Just for the record, there were plenty of arthouses in New York in the 1930s and '40s.
Here are a few I know of, from reading contemporary film reviews and checking the Cinema Treasures website: http://cinematreasures.org/location/countr...ate=33&show=all

Thalia
Little Carnegie
55 St. Playhouse
World (49 St.)
Avenue Playhouse
Apollo (an arthouse on 42 St.!)
Filmarte

A comment in the entry for the 55 St. Playhouse says this:
"In 1930 it opened TWO HEARTS IN WALTZ TIME a German film and the first foreign language film subtitled for U.S. release. The novelty paid off and the film ran for a year."

Again, in continuing to look over contemporary reviews of 1930s foreign films in the U.S. press, I occasionally see references to subtitles, but never to dubbing. I don't dispute that dubbing became common after the war, but I'm still curious as to when it started happening on a regular basis and for which films.

I did find one reference to a dubbed Italian film on the Cinema Treasures website, in the entry for the Little Carnegie theater when a poster comments that a film that played there as part of an Italian Film Week series later showed up dubbed at neighborhood theaters. Here's the comment:

"That's a wonderful program! "Anna" received a big distribution in (was it?) '54 when it had been dubbed and circulated across the RKO nabes circuit. I remember seeing it at the RKO Dyker, against my parents' wishes ("All those Italian films are immoral"--that about the land of the popes). I told them I was going to the Alpine to see "I Love Melvin," or something like it, but went to the steamy Dyker instead. Hot stuff. A clip from it surfaced in "Cinema Paradiso" decades later, suggesting that it was a big hit in the papal territories as well. By the time "Umberto D" came to Brooklyn (to the venerable Astor on Flatbush Avenue), I was in h.s. and a regular patron of that theater. "

I remember a theater in my old neighborhood in the Bronx in the early '60s showing Italian films in Italian, but I'm not sure if there were subs. or not. I'm assuming there were. Another theater up the block would be showing dubbed Italian Hercules movies.

As a kid in the late 60s and early 70s, my parents took me with them to see almost everything at the cinema. Popcorn and those roomy rocking chair seats of old made a cheap babysitter.

I distinctly remember my parents groaning when they discovered that the foreign film they had come to see was dubbed and not subtitled. Both prints were making the rounds on the circuit. Prints that would make it to the local cinemas would almost always be dubbed while a subtitled print would be screened at the local university's film society.

As for Hercules and Godzilla, those releases were largely targeted at children - an audience not particularly enamored with the idea of having to read subtitles.

Getting back to what started this whole inquiry, I should add that I found a relevant quote about GODZILLA's dubbing in a chapter of Japan's Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of "The Big G," by Steve Ryfle. Edmund Goldman, the man who actually bought the rights from Toho to distribute GOJIRA to the U.S. and Canada, and then sold them to someone else, is interviewed and says, "I didn't know at the time that Raymond Burr was going to be in it, or that it would be dubbed into English. I just thought it was something we could put subtitles on. It turned out to be a bonanza."

In the audio commentary on the GOJIRA/GODZILLA 2-disc set, Ryfle is one of the commentators along with Ed Godziszewski, author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Godzilla, and, as part of the commentary, Ed G. plays a part of the recorded interview with Goldman, including that quote.

Based on Brian's first post, I have ordered a copy of Kerry Segrave's book FOREIGN FILMS IN AMERICA, because this is a topic I am interested in and obviously there are some discrepancies in the research material I've been reading.

As I understand it in relation specifically to GODZILLA, Levine's prior experience with those Italian classics was somewhat disappointing, and he was looking for more populist entertainment to try to recover some of his losses. If it is true that the Italian films were dubbed, then I had taken for granted that he would not have considered subtitling GODZILLA, on the logic that if he wasn't subtitling Rosselini then why subtitle giant monsters?

But, as Brian has noted and I've turned up since then, it looks like subtitling was the default for Japanese imports--in 1956, Ko Nakahira's New Wave inaugural CRAZED FRUIT was shown in the US subtitled under the title JUVENILE JUNGLE.

I was wrong earlier when I said that the default for foreign films in the 1950s was dubbing--clearly there were differences from distributor to distributor and between the countries of origin. However, I still think dubbing was more prevalent for serious, high-brow imports in the 1950s than we would now consider typical.

I remember Harriet White Medin telling me that she saw a dubbed version of PAISAN in New York City; I am not certain of the time period, but she was astonished that the producers of the English track found a voice exactly like hers to dub her role.

I believe there were also English-dubbed versions of Abel Gance's THE DELUGE and J'ACCUSE, not to mention Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ORPHEUS. In fact, I would assume that nearly any foreign language film released here prior to the mid-1960s had to be available in a choice of dubbed or subtitled prints.

Several of Riccardo Freda's early costume pictures from the late '40s and early '50s got a US release in dubbed versions. THE SON OF D'ARTAGNAN was released here under the now-amusing title THE GAY SWORDSMAN. (I have a one-sheet, which I could probably sell for a small fortune.)

I've always preferred the English version of A MAN AND A WOMAN. The subtitled version doesn't translate the lyrics of the samba song.

The first time I saw VAMPYR it was a dubbed version. (This was on PBS in the 70's.) I have no idea when the dub was created, but it was very primitive - the dubbed lines were apparently just cut into the soundtrack, as the music and effects would drop out completely whenever someone spoke. I wouldn't be surprised to find it was made back in the 30's.

Didn't Dreyer make the film in three languages?

The version I saw was definitely dubbed. You could tell by the way the audio was cut in. Luckily, though, very little dialogue in VAMPYR.

I've seen dubbed versions of both RASHOMON and MR HULOT'S HOLIDAY. I've always hoped to find a dubbed copy of SEVEN SAMURAI, but this still eludes me (although the first time I saw it in the 80s it was a subtitled release print of the edited version entitled THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN)
In some cases I prefer the dubbed version, as in Fellini's 8 & 1/2, which for me loses a lot of the director's humor when subtitled (not to mention that the subtitles can only accomodate a single line of dialog during crowd scenes where people are constantly interrupting and stepping on each other's lines )

I've been reading A Drifting Life, a thick one-volume autobiographical manga by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, who emerged as a high school-aged aspiring manga artist after the war and was heavily influenced by Osamu Tezuka. The author, like Tezuka, was a film buff, and he lists films that came to Japan during and after the Occupation, including THE THIRD MAN, FORBIDDEN GAMES, and LIMELIGHT. He devotes special attention to SHANE in the form of a few panels of drawings replicating scenes from the film, including a closeup of Jack Palance. He goes on to say that in 1954, DUMBO came to Japan and was the first foreign film to be dubbed in Japanese. So the preceding films were, presumably, subtitled in Japanese. Interesting.

Another dubbed film which I'd kill for a copy of is the all-Hindi Bollywood style version of BAMBI, complete with tablas and sitars.

I wish someone would interview Sonya Friedman, who subtitled virtually every foreign art house film once upon a time (in concert, I seem to recall, with a key NYC auteurist and eurofilm buff/historian/distributor).

She's often confused (as at imdb) with Dr. Sonya, once of CNN, but I believe they're distinct personalities.

She currently subtitles operas, some of which she films for presentation on PBS.

Here's a little information, including how to contact her:operatitles.net

Wow, thanks for that lead, James. I know Sonya and I even queried her some years ago about subtitling a foreign film for the TV station I work for (her price was too high for us, IIRC).

Nothing substantial, just stray comments:

Seven Samurai was originally released in the US as The Magnificent Seven. In fact it's listed in the Oscars database under that second title. Was this dubbed?

I've never quite understood why Bollywood DVDs subtitle everything except the song lyrics, though this is presumably different for ones released by US companies for mainstream audiences.

Didn't Las Hurdes have an alternate English-language version? Not really dubbing since it would just replace the original audio.

I'm sure most of us know that early sound films were sometimes filmed in a second language - there still exist Spanish versions of Dracula (alternate cast) and some Laurel & Hardy shorts as well as an English The Blue Angel. I don't think there were ever many of these but at what point did it become more financially feasible to dub or subtitle?

I heard somewhere that Naruse's Wife Be Like a Rose was the first Japanese film to be released in the US. True?

I've heard (but can't confirm) that subtitling of Bollywood dvds/films is for the benefit of a pan-Indian audience which includes many folks who speak languages other than Hindi. English is a colonial legacy and a lingua franca (as it were).

Don't know why song lyrics would be dropped, however. The songs often supply the key to understanding the drama, relating what the story is really about in compressed, emblematic form.

The dvds I buy in Indian neighborhoods around Los Angeles subtitle everything as a rule...

In Bosley Crowther's review of the film, titled THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, published in The New York Times on Nov. 20, 1956, he mentions that the film is in Japanese with English subtitles. The U.S. release was about an hour shorter than the 3-&-1/2-hour original cut. (Crowther still complains that it was too long.) I understand that the film was later given a mass release in a dubbed version, under the same title. I'm not sure when the uncut version, titled THE SEVEN SAMURAI, first appeared in the U.S. I know that I saw it at a Kurosawa Festival at the Bijou theater in Times Square in 1971 and that I also saw it on public TV in its uncut form within a year or so of my seeing it in the theater. Some revival theater showed it several years later and claimed it was the first time it was being seen in the U.S.

Interestingly, I saw YOJIMBO at the same festival where I saw SEVEN SAMURAI. The Bijou was on the same block as the Astor and the Victoria, which were adjacent theaters on Broadway between 45 St. and 46 St. Those were the theaters where I first saw A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, the Italian western remake of YOJIMBO, and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, the western remake of SEVEN SAMURAI. I'd seen both of those only months earlier. So I saw SEVEN SAMURAI, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, YOJIMBO, and A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS all for the first time within a year on the same piece of Times Square real estate.

This past May 23, I went to see THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960 version) on the big screen at the Walter Reade Theater where it ran as part of a Steve McQueen festival. Robert Vaughn, the last surviving actor to play one of the seven, was there to introduce it. And he'd had dinner two nights earlier with Eli Wallach, another surviving cast member. The print of the film looked pretty much like the print I saw back in 1971. No "digital restoration," thank God.

THE BARABARIANS/ IL SACCO DI ROMA (1953) turns up dubbed on a British digital channel dubbed all the time. I wonder when it was (rather well) dubbed.

You can see it online here:

http://www.viewtv.co.uk/movies4men/TheBarbarians

There's an amount of post- Hercules sword and sandal and swashbuckler movies floating around but Italy seems to have a much older tradition of these costume pictures which never turn up. A black and white Italian swashbuckler is a rare thing to see.

I've seen an english narrated version of LAS HURDES entitled LAND WITHOUT BREAD. Likewise the French narrated version (which is included on Films Sans Frontieres release of LOS OLVIDADOS) is entitled TERRE SANS PAIN.

The UK Laurel & Hardy dvd's include several Spanish and French language versions (such as the french LAUGHING GRAVY and spanish CHICKENS COME HOME which are expanded into features) and the German sets include some films dubbed into German as well as the German language trailer. One anomaly on the German collections is an extended version of PARDON US which incorporates both the extended english language version and footage from the Spanish language version (which has a different ending).