Steve Reeves - What did he really sound like?

[dantelis]

I have recently been watching some of my old Steve Reeves movies and am wondering...what did Reeves sound like?  Does anyone have a electronic audio file of Reeves, either from an interview or from the one movie in which he did his own voice work, Athena?

[stuntmovie]

Somewhere in storage I have a personally autographed copy of Athena. Will have to dig it up and check it out again. I think that was the one movie in which he appeared in his best competitive shape.

I talked to Steve personally a number of times and even watched one of the Hercules movies with him but I failed to ask the "voice question", but his normal speaking voice was like anyone elses.

I am not sure about this but I believe that his voice was dubbed in one of  more of his Herc films not because of the sound of his voice, but the manner in which he used it as an actor.

I don't recall Steve ever being a real excitable type guy so that somewhat deadpan manner of talking might have been carried over onto his movie roles which necessitated the producer to do the voiceover with another actor.

I am not definite about this because it was too long ago, but it would be interesting to hear from others who used to talk to Steve and get their opinion and the finer details.

I don't ever recall him having a squeekie voice which would necessitate such action as a voiceover.

I had the priviledge of meeting Steve while he was in his early 20's when he lived in the Oakland area of California. He also used to come to a summer resort called Rio Nido on the Russian River which is about 70 miles north of the SF/Oak area. Even got in a fight there once.

It wasn't until years later when I had the opportunity to meet him again  in Hawaii over a four day period while he was there in support of a Gold's Gym function.

We've move a number of times since then but I'll do my best to see if I can find those photos.

[619Rules]

All the voices in the Hercules movies are dubbed-no one uses their own voice. Those were Itailian movies-as were most of the others that Steve did.

They were made for Italian audiences, and were dubbed in Italian, then they were released in the US and re-dubbed in English. What most people don't know about movies is that the actors go into a studio, after filming is finished, and put voices onto the movie track if it is needed.

[onlyme]

Yes that is called dubbing or voice over.  In alost every scen where there is allot of people like a dance floor and the subject is a couple dancing and they are talking while you hear music in the back ground, the actors are miced or a boom is used and the background music all other sounds are dubbed in.  Voice-overs are usually done with scenes that have no live actors talking but need a narration of sort.  In almost every dance scene you see on screen the background actors are dancing to a strobe light or kind of rythmic sound.  No actual music is heard live.  Plus when you see people cheering in a crowd or whatever allot of times they are MOS which stands for Motion Out Sound if I recall. 

I did it for a McDonalds commercial I did here.  Studios try to avoid it as much as possible but there are times where it is unavoidable and has to be done.  I did a dub session called "parroting". I did a McDonalds commercial here.  I had to sweep the camera with a chain saw fully operable and very loud.  Well, when I open my mouth they stopped me almost immediately and said "aren't you local"  I said no I am from LA.  They said you look local, can you sound local.  I said yes when I am around them I pick it up.  SO the next day they hired another actor who had a local twang to him.  We both had identical scripts and he would read first them I would mimic (parrot) him in the sound booth while watching the video portion of the commercial.  And that is how we shot that commercial.  The cool thing was I got paid for two days instead of one.

[wgtnmuscle1]

if you buy his life story on dvd
it has his real voice on it
great dvd if you want to know more about this great bodybuilder
you can get it from his website stevereeves.com

[rocket]

I know one thing for a fact.  Dubbing is either much better done or not atall now (in movies).  It was really quite obvious in older movies but almost non existent in new ones.

But you amreekans might not know this but places like subway dub australian voices onto your american ads and throw them on tv here.  Really really sucky.  I was thinking of purchasing some subway stamps from ebay in retribution - the removal of stamps has not happened here yet, but I'm sure I could enthuse it with a purchase of 5000 stamps from ebay.

[Pat Rocco]

I saw reeves on the old Jor Franklin talk show out of New York in the mid or early 70's .He wrote a book on Power Walking .His voice was deep .

[Hedgehog]

I have recently been watching some of my old Steve Reeves movies and am wondering...what did Reeves sound like?  Does anyone have a electronic audio file of Reeves, either from an interview or from the one movie in which he did his own voice work, Athena?

I am sorry to inform you that he had a very high pitched voice, not at all the manly kind of voice you were hoping for one would've expect.

YIP
Zack

[dantelis]

I am sorry to inform you that he had a very high pitched voice, not at all the manly kind of voice you were hoping for one would've expect.

YIP
Zack

I finally saw 'Jail Bait' where Reeves voice wasn't dubbed and it was pretty deep.  (Movie was crap.  Good to hear Reeves real voice.) 

Makes me wonder why Reeves didn't push to use his real voice in his later movies when he was one of the top movie stars in the world.  Maybe his acting was just too bad, or maybe it was just easier for him to leave the dubbing to others.

[Made in Montana]

You can hear Steve's voice here...naturally deep...2 min. 30 seconds in...  http://ltvreal.liketelevision.com/ramgen/lt60/jailbaitprev.rm

Here is another link to watch Jailbait. Click on the play button to watch/hear Steve: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:ItvsdiPOgkEJ:tesla.liketelevision.com/liketelevision/tuner.php%3Fchannel%3D885%26format%3Dmovie%26theme%3Dguide+steve+reeves+video+clip&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=54&gl=us

Steve had a very nice voice. He sang and played the guitar well. He trained with the great bass-baritone George London in NY in 1954.  I have video tapes/dvds of his voice...maybe I will make them into clips to share. You can hear his real voice in Jailbait, Athena and Long Ride from Hell.
Steve made 14 european movies back to back...one directly after the other in Europe declining to take the time to redub his own voice because it wasn't in his contract to do so. He saved time by allowing someone with a similiar voice to do it. He was the highest paid actor in the world at one point earning $250,000/film. America's highest paid actor, John Wayne, made only $100,000 in comparison.
All of the actors' voices were redubbed later in Steve's european films because of the variey of languages spoken by the actors. For instance, in White Warrior, there is a scene with seven people sitting around a campfire. Steve spoke english, the person next to him spoke spanish, the person on the other side of him spoke italian, another person spoke yugoslav, another spoke serb and the the 7th spoke french. Steve knew the meanings of their translated lines and how to react to them but he didn't know exactly when they were going to end their sentence. In order to have the timing of when to come in, Steve looked for a foot stomp or grunt by the actor--that was the cue for him to come in with the english line.

In Hercules, Steve was the only actor speaking english. The rest of the cast spoke italian. So Steve had to really concentrate on the language as well as the emotions. Sergio Fantoni (Eteocles) was one of the few who spoke just a little english. By the time Steve finished making movies, he spoke italian, french and spanish, but it was a challenge in the beginning when he started.




                         

[dantelis]

Thanks Made In Montana!  Really appreciate your memories and insight into Steve. 

I may have to find a copy of Long Ride from Hell on DVD, if it is available.  My understanding is that Steve was considered for the "man with no name," spaghetti westerns that eventually made Clint Eastwood a movie star.  This movie may give a clue how Steve would have done in those Sergio Leone films.

[Made in Montana]

Thank you Dantelis.
In 1959, Sergio Leone was the assistant director to Mario Bonnard in Last Days of Pompeii, but did about 90% of the directing of the film. He overdirected and bossed everyone around in this film more than he needed to and Steve didn't much care for his attitude at times. In one scene, Steve was behind bars and Sergio told him to do it a certain way. Steve asked him, "Why?" so that it made sense to him because he wan't going to do it that way without having a good reason. Sergio said, "Because I said so!" Steve got mad and went after Sergio, grabbed him and was going to let him have it. Several guys on the set pulled Steve off of Sergio...after that they got along better.
Here's a few clips from Last Days of Pompeii:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQCjCwoSaJ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnPYRhWyo00&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnPYRhWyo00&feature=related

Sergio Leone offered Steve the lead role in Fistful of Dollars in 1964, but Steve turned it down and the role went to Clint Eastwood launching Clint's career giving him opportunities in other spaghetti westerns made over in Italy. Steve was already named number one box office movie star in the world that year, so the role may not have had as great of an affect on his career as it did Clint's, who was unknown before Fistful of Dollars. Steve thought Clint did a good job with the role and did not regret turning it down as much as he regretted not being behind the camera directing more films because directing appealed to him more than acting did. Steve never really cared a great deal for acting, but enjoyed the opportunity to earn a living, meet people and the traveling that came with it. He wasn't really interested in being paid a lot less in the U.S. to act than he was accustomed to earning over in Europe, so when he moved back to the U.S., he took up cattle ranching and raised morgan horses because he had interest in those things as well. He did take part in one last film, however, that he wrote the screenplay, directed and acted in: Long Ride from Hell.