Here’s a special post by my friend Ana Eire…
How a Spanish girl got hooked on Hollywood classic films
I became a classic movie fan because of the Franco dictatorship. When I was a child in the sixties and seventies in Spain, the state-owned national TV channel relied heavily on American classic films to fill its programming, with a good dose of American TV shows such as Bonanza, Bewitched, Get Smart, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and many others. Franco died in 1975, but during the beginning of the transition to democracy the TV did not change much in its programming. We got some recent films, such as Take the Money and Run by Woody Allen, and we were able to see classics that had not been shown due to censorship, as was the case with Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. American classics dominated Spanish TV until the mid-eighties.
My childhood was filled with black-and-white American films: from Westerns and comedies in the early afternoon, to musicals in the evening, to crime, dramas, and melodramas at night. There were practically no commercials so the interstitials were filled with Warner Bros. cartoons or with silent shorts. Harold Lloyd was a favorite, but Chaplin, Keaton, and “El Gordo y el Flaco” (“The Fat and the Skinny,” yes, Laurel and Hardy) were regulars.
I feel I grew up in a time warp. As a child, I wasn’t aware that these were old movies. The actors were my contemporaries. I was in love with Errol Flynn without realizing that he had been dead for over a decade. My sister danced in our bedroom imitating Ginger Rogers, even though she could also dance to pop songs. Classic Hollywood movies did not feel foreign. On the contrary, they represented my world. The context just happened to look different from my small city in northwest Spain. Through those movies I knew that there was another world outside, a world I could relate to, and that was so exciting.
The movies were dubbed in Spanish. I was not surprised that the characters spoke Spanish. Why not? The mouths seemed perfectly synchronised, or so I thought. Spain had a big dubbing industry. It was serious business. Pedro Almodóvar references its importance when he makes the protagonists of his film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown voice actors, and we see them dubbing a scene from Johnny Guitar. It is also a homage to the way he became interested in film. My case is not unique at all.
Voice actors specialized on dubbing specific Hollywood actors. Katharine Hepburn had her Spanish voice, and Cary Grant had his. I remember when Rock Hudson visited Spain in the late seventies and he met the actor who dubbed him. He told reporters that he liked the voice very much. Everybody was very pleased, but we were not surprised.
Of course, I value the fact that now I can understand and recognize the original voices, so distinctive, but I don’t laugh at the dubbed versions…. except for the musicals. Sometimes they would dub the songs, sometimes they would not. The Sound of Music had a Spanish woman singing instead of Julie Andrews. That was a crime.
My father used to tell me how in the 30’s and 40’s, whenever he would go to movie theaters to see musicals, there would be a big “oh no” of disappointment when the song began. The songs wouldn’t be dubbed and the audience didn’t like that they couldn’t understand the lyrics. My father loved the music, the singing, the musical numbers. He spoke with admiration of Cover Girl, Showboat, Oklahoma, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter. My parents loved American films and that contributed to making me a classic movie fan. Capra, Hitchcock, and Billy Wilder were household names.
I went to college and stopped watching TV. I became more interested in the new films being made. I moved to the USA. Years passed. One day I got cable and found TCM. I realized that the world I had know in my childhood was alive and well, and that it was much bigger and richer than I could have imagined. It had entertained and delighted the girl, and it could also satisfy many other expectations that the adult woman had. I was hooked all over again.
When people ask me why I came to the USA, I have a detailed narrative of whys and hows, facts and dates. It is all true at a superficial level. Deep down I know I came here because of all those movies. I knew I could belong.
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About the author: Ana Eire is Professor of Spanish at Stetson University in Florida.
Once upon a screen... 
How fascinating! Many thanks to both for a splendid essay.
Thank you for reading it!
A terrific essay…and I pity the actor who had to dub the inimitable William Powell.
Ha! You’re right! The Thin Man series was very popular…
What great memories Ana seems to have. And why not? Those films are classic for a reason. The actors, the directors, the stories were all classic. Even in our memories, we remember those films as classic.
I am glad you enjoyed it.
I didn’t know about the movie translation industry in Spain. It sounds like they employed talented actors and directors to be so seamless with dubbing.
Thanks for sharing these wonderful memories with us!
They employed talented actors, but now, when I see the dubbing I can’t help but miss the “original” voice. It’s ruined fo me! Thanks for reading!
What a lovely story.
A shame about the dubbing but guess it was cheaper to do rather than subtitling.
I think so. Thanks for reading!
Thanks for sharing. I love articles like these that are personal relationships between the writer and the movies. Try to write them myself at times, they come from the heart. Well done.
Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed it.
A very reflective article…
I made acquaintance with the author when she was working on her PhD and I was an aspiring physicist.
I recall having conversations with her about classical American movies; the distinctive impression that I was talking to someone with a wide latitude of knowledge in the area.
I grew up in India; I recall my dad taking us to a movie theater to watch Laural-Hardy, Charlie Chaplin. Its still fresh in my mind how the credits would roll and how sad that mad me feel; the movie was over and I didn’t know when next I would see another one.
I loved the Westerns. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood; didn’t know they were American icons until I came to USA. Much as the author, I could rationalize why I came to America but I know I came here ’cause I could relate.
As we physicists like to say, ‘Entanglement’…
–Quantum Activist
Thank you for sharing your experience with film in this charming piece. I can relate to the “time warp” feeling associated with immersion in the Golden Age of movies culture. It lends a different perspective to life that, I believe, is beneficial.
Thank you, Patricia, for reading. I agree with you. I think the “time warp” feeling is beneficial. However, I can’t help but to feel strange every time I think about it 🙂
What a great essay! The power of film is amazing.
Thank you for reading it! I am glad you enjoyed it.
What an incredible essay of your early life! Classic Hollywood affects us in a lot of in different ways. I grew up in Detroit in the 1960’s. This was pre cable TV. Living in Detroit we could receive the CBC out of Windsor Ontario. There was a Saturday afternoon program called the “Bill Kennedy Showtime”. Bill Kennedy was an actor who had a career from the early 40’s through the early 50’s. He never had a leading role but was a supporting actor in many films such as “Destination Tokyo” staring Cary Grant and “Joan of Arc” starring Ingrid Bergman. He retired from acting in the mid 50’s and moved to Detroit. His television program broadcast from Windsor Canada was in my opinion the precursor to TCM. He would show many movies from the 30’s, 40’s an early 50’and talk about the actors an sometimes have them on his show. This is how I discovered classic Hollywood and learned to love and enjoyed the movies. We all have our own story. But it all comes back to the love of movies!
Thank you, Brian, for reading and for sharing your story. I had never heard of that program. It is always fascinating to discover the different paths we all took to arrive at the same point, the love of classic movies. Thanks again.