Italian postcard by ASER (Aldo Scarmiglia Ed. Roma), no. 71. Photo: Pesce / Scalera Film.
Emilio Cigoli, born Emilio Cardi Cigoli (Livorno, 18 November 1909 - Rome, 7 November 1980), was an Italian actor, voice actor and dubbing director.
Emilio Cigoli was a descendant of the Renaissance artist Lodovico Cardi, known as Il Cigoli. His grandfather Luigi was a silent film actor who acted several times alongside Francesca Bertini. He was the son of the actor Carlo Cigoli (1886 - 1932) and the actress and voice actress Giovanna Cigoli. He made his theatre debut at the age of eighteen in Alfredo De Sanctis's company, while he later joined those of Luigi Cimara and Alfredo Sainati, acting alongside Marta Abba and Romano Calò. From the first half of the 1930s, he devoted himself to radio prose broadcast by EIAR, often under the direction of Aldo Silvani. After an intense theatrical activity, he made his film debut in 1935 in a small part in Mario Mattoli's film Amo te sola, but never managed to make a significant impact. His most important and best-known performance remains that of the tragic father in Vittorio De Sica's I bambini ci guardano (1943). De Sica called him back a few years later in Sciuscià, but Cigoli's performance in Domenica d'agosto (Luciano Emer, 1950) is also worth remembering.
Gifted with a mellow, baritone voice, Cigoli was mainly active as a voice actor, starting work in 1936. The first leading actor he dubbed was Fernandel in the film Regain (1937), while the actors he dubbed with continuity in the pre-war period were James Stewart, who after the war would be dubbed by Gualtiero De Angelis, and John Wayne, whom except on a few occasions he continued to dub throughout his career. In the early summer of 1943, Cigoli went to Spain to shoot two Italian-Spanish co-production films: Dora, la espía, directed by Raffaello Matarazzo and with Maruchi Fresno, Adriano Rimoldi and Francesca Bertini in the leads opposite Cigoli, and Il matrimonio segreto, an unfinished film directed by Camillo Mastrocinque. His travelling and working companions were in addition to Rimoldi also Nerio Bernardi, Anita Farra, Franco Coop, Felice Romano, Enrico Luzi, Laura Solari and Paola Barbara. Once filming was finished, the group of actors, considering the events of 25 July (the arrest of Mussolini) and 8 September (the armistice with the Allies) in Italy and the difficult train connections, decided to postpone their return home. It was a 20th Century Fox representative in the Spanish capital who contacted them, proposing that they participate in the dubbing of some of the American company's films, which would be ready for screening when conditions in Italy would allow the film market to reopen. A number of films were thus dubbed in the period 1943-1944, including How Green Was My Valley, Suspicion, Charley's Aunt, The Lodger, The Mark of Zorro, Son of Fury, and The Purple Heart. These films arrived ready in Italy following the US troops and were included in the film circuits controlled by the Americans themselves and the heads of the distribution companies.
In 1945, the group of actors returned to Rome and Emilio Cigoli resumed his work as a dubbing actor, with the reopening of the synchronisation studios that had been at a standstill for almost two years. In 1946, he became a member of the Cooperativa Doppiatori Cinematografici (C.D.C.), becoming the most representative dubbing actor for about two decades. He became the official or recurring Italian dubbing actor of the most famous male stars in film history, such as Gary Cooper, Clark Gable (previously dubbed by his colleague Romolo Costa), John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster, William Holden, Jean Gabin, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Howard Keel, Stewart Granger, George Sanders, Joseph Cotten, Charles Boyer, Henry Fonda, Orson Welles, Richard Burton, Charlton Heston, Robert Ryan, Sterling Hayden, Jeff Chandler, Vincent Price and Humphrey Bogart. His dubbing of Marlon Brando as Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar and especially of Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront, Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind and Lee Van Cleef as Colonel Douglas Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More and Sentenza in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (both films) remain famous. For his dubbing of Jean Gabin in La Bête humaine he received a long letter of congratulations from the French actor. He was also an evocative narrator in many films, for instance in the first three episodes of the popular Don Camillo series, as well as in various documentaries, such as several episodes in the Disney series People and Countries and Nature and Her Wonders. For his fruitful contribution in the field of dubbing, in 1961 he was awarded the gold medal at the Una vita per il cinema event, together with his long-time colleague Lydia Simoneschi.
In 1966, due to internal disputes concerning the allocation of actors to be dubbed, he left the C.D.C., where he had worked for decades, to become a partner of the Actors' Synchronisation Company (S.A.S.): this caused a sudden turnover of some important voices, such as that of John Wayne, who for four films, namely Cast a Giant Shadow, El Dorado, The War Wagon and Brannigan, would speak through other actors. After this last film, all subsequent films of the American actor were sent to S.A.S. for dubbing, where Cigoli resumed dubbing Wayne until his last film, The Shootist of 1976. In the 1970s he was the reader, in commentary, of the passages of the Via Crucis at the Colosseum travelled by the Pope during Holy Week. During the same period he was very active on Radio Rai in literary popularisation programmes such as Il racconto del venerdì or variety shows such as Un altro giorno. Among Cigoli's last dubbings were the one of Trevor Howard in the television film And the Band Played On (1980) and those of Conrad Bain as Philip Drummond in the first season of the TV series Diff'rent Strokes (1978-). An extremely active voice actor, Cigoli is believed to have dubbed more than ten thousand films over more than forty years.
In the 1970s Cigoli was often involved in TV dramas produced by RAI, such as Malombra, Dimenticare Lisa or Il furto della Gioconda.
Emilio Cigoli married Valentina Cortino with whom he had two sons: Carlo and Ludovico. He married on his second marriage to dubbing director and dialogist Giovanna Garatti. He died after a short illness on 7 November 1980 and was buried at the Verano Cemetery.
Source: Italian Wikipedia.