American Western Stars Invade Europe! Brett Halsey-Robert Woods Reveal Story of Spaghetti Westerns!

[00:00:00]When you were making those spaghetti westerns, they were so successful over there and most did not come to the United States. You all were were superstars in Europe. Why do you think they weren't accepted or respected in this country?

[00:00:20]>> Mainly, no, not mainly, partially because they were uh most of them were dubbed and the American audiences didn't like dubbed films. I remember him also.

[00:00:30]I remember people who says how fast he was, but I didn't believe it then any more than I do now. The only way to get him is from behind.

[00:00:42][music] We're here to honor one of the [applause] disrespected genres that has now gained respect, the spaghetti western. And we are lucky today to have uh a couple of the premier stars of spaghetti westerns.

[00:01:05]And I'd like to offer a [snorts] gift here. If somebody can tell me the answer to we have this uh hanging man hangman Andy Finity our buddy produced this.

[00:01:21]If somebody could tell me what series our next guest Brett Hollyy replaced Richard Long in. It's a movie series. Richard Long was a romantic lead in that and he went off and uh we do have a hand up. Yes.

[00:01:42]>> Ma and Paw Kettle is the exact answer.

[00:01:46]Brett Hollyy. Yes. [applause] Good. Pass this on down to him.

[00:01:53]And with that, let's have Brett Hollyy come up and sing Farmer in the Dell.

[00:01:59][applause] >> [applause] >> Bet you never thought that would come up again, right?

[00:02:07]>> You know, uh Bob For and I were just talking about that. It's [laughter] >> before we get into the spaghetti westerns, tell us a little bit about M Pettle. That was such a huge series. It was hysterical. Very Marjorie Maine, Percy Kilbride. How did you get the the romantic lead in that?

[00:02:26]>> I was under contract to Universal. It's one of those Hollywood stories like Lena Turner on the on the stool at u the drugstore.

[00:02:36]>> Schwabs.

[00:02:38]>> Schwabs. Yeah. But I was u I was a when I was a teenager, I was a page at CBS radio and I was uh one of the shows that I worked was the Jack Benny show.

[00:02:50]So, uh, Jackaba took a liking to me and one day, uh, my boss came and said, "Mary wants you to work the sponsors booth." The sponsors booth in radio was a, uh, a booth above the stage, glassed in for special guests.

[00:03:08]So, I said, "Okay." And I went and and Mary came by and she was just beaming and and she said, "I want you to meet blah." I said, "Oh, how do you do?" I was very polite. I was a nice kid.

[00:03:20]The next day I got a call that they wanted to see me at Universal.

[00:03:27]I said, 'What for? They said, "I don't know. Go the casting." They want to see you at casting.

[00:03:32]So, I went and um they said, "Well, we're thinking about putting you under contract. Do you have a scene you can read?" I said, "No."

[00:03:44]They said, "Well, we'll we'll uh you have to eat this thing."

[00:03:49]>> How's that? Is that comfortable?

[00:03:50]>> Yeah. [laughter] Uh they said, "Well, uh we'll give you a scene. You come back uh tomorrow at 2 o'clock." So 2:00 I went back. I had this scene in my hand. And I said, "Well, I I I can do this now." And they said, "Fine, but uh you don't have to.

[00:04:05]We've decided to put you under contract."

[00:04:09]I said, "Okay. [laughter] I was a teenager. I didn't know. I thought, well, that's the way you get into Hollywood. Somebody calls you up.

[00:04:18]And so, as it turned out, Barry had introduced me to uh William Gats, the president of Universal.

[00:04:28]And probably he he said, "All right, he's a nice kid. I'll put him under contract." But that's how I got started.

[00:04:36]This is uh 60some years ago, I guess.

[00:04:40]Yeah.

[00:04:42]done 101 movies since then.

[00:04:44]>> And you did some some early TV westerns, too. I think Richard Carlson's Mckenzie's Raiders.

[00:04:50]>> Yeah.

[00:04:51]>> Yeah. Mackenzie's that uh he I I liked working with him. He was he was >> Did he direct many of those too? I know later in his career he he started uh directing.

[00:05:00]>> Not that I was involved in. No. I worked on uh Bat Masterson, Alias Smith and Jones.

[00:05:09]>> Even Kung Fu. The legend continues. Our friend Michael Sloan was doing that up in Canada. You did one of those, too, I think.

[00:05:15]>> Yeah, that was funny. That >> I had worked I worked on Dukes of Hazard for a couple years. I was uh writing that's a whole other story, so I won't get into that.

[00:05:26]>> Well, I know that uh you were working in Italy before the spaghetti western boom.

[00:05:32]You had done some of the the the espionage, the spy films like James Bond before the the western spaghetti western craze hit.

[00:05:41]>> Before that, I was doing what they call the capo spada, the cape and sword like scarab three musketeers.

[00:05:50]Uh I was doing a series at Fox called um Follow the Sun. And when that is that my story?

[00:05:58]>> These are my notes.

[00:05:59]>> Oh.

[00:06:03]here. [laughter] >> No, you that's big print there. That's okay.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah. Well, you know, the print's not big enough, obviously.

[00:06:13]But anyway, I was uh invited to when my series folded almost the next day, I got an invitation to go to Rome to make a sword fighting picture. And I always loved those pictures. Scaramoosh was one of my favorite films ever.

[00:06:27]>> That had a great sword fight in that, too. And I was uh I'd taken sword fighting at the Y in Hollywood.

[00:06:32]>> Didn't in one of your films at climax with a sword fight, one of your spaghetti westerns >> or was that uh >> that's probably Roberts. Yeah. No, >> no, I just did the gun stuff.

[00:06:46]>> Uh the first Spaghetti Western film you did was uh Kill Johnny Ringo, >> right? That's not it.

[00:06:53]>> Nope.

[00:06:53]>> That's Today we Kill, Tomorrow We Die, >> which had several names. Now wait a minute. Let's take a look at that poster. Can everybody see this? Who the heck is Montgomery Ford?

[00:07:04]>> You know, I I never thought anyone would ever notice. [laughter] I would get kind of um difficult at times and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that picture.

[00:07:20]So, for some reason, I said, "Okay, I'll do it, but I want to put another name on it." Which was a stupid thing to do.

[00:07:27]I've done many stupid things in my life.

[00:07:31]Well, the picture became the biggest grossing western of the year. That year, all of a sudden, Montgomery Ford was a big star. [laughter] The death of Brett Hollyy. [laughter] >> Oh, it was so hard to kill Montgomery Ford, I tell you that. [laughter] Well, so you were then locked in with this name Montgomery Ford.

[00:07:58]>> Well, I did one other film. My contract called for three. I just refused to do the third one >> because I was getting calls from Hollywood. Oh, we hear you changed your name. I said, "God, no. I didn't change my name, [laughter] but it's a very good film. I'm proud of that film."

[00:08:14]>> I I think Wade Preston, you worked with Wade Preston, who was the star of Colt 45 here at Warner Brothers.

[00:08:20]>> Good actor. He was over there for a while, too. Did you all hang hang out together? Uh, >> yeah. Wade was part of our group. Uh, >> we >> So, what's a typical night?

[00:08:34]>> I don't remember much about the nights.

[00:08:36][laughter] >> Well, let's see. Oh, it was the 60s.

[00:08:41]>> Yeah.

[00:08:43]>> Well, none of us remember much about >> remember one night. Uh, I guess I can't tell.

[00:08:49][laughter] Especially not with our wives here.

[00:08:52]>> Well, should we read your book?

[00:08:55]>> Uh oh. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:57]>> Oh, >> actually, I have a new book out. Just came out this week. It has nothing to do with westerns, though. It's a a noir.

[00:09:06]It's about good people doing bad things.

[00:09:09]It's [laughter] It's called a grave misunderstanding.

[00:09:15]>> Go buy it.

[00:09:18]>> Amazon.

[00:09:20]Barnes & Noble, all that.

[00:09:22]>> You did also did, speaking of film noir, you did uh a film that Mario Baba, who who directed the Black Sunday with Barbara Steel and is known for his is his is really frightening uh horror films out of Italy. You did Roy Colt and Winchester Jack with him.

[00:09:40]>> Yeah. Yeah. Uh Baba was one of the masters of horror in Italy along with Lucha Fulchi and uh but he loved comedy.

[00:09:50]He was he had a great sense of humor.

[00:09:51]Baba so we did two comedies together. We did um Roy Colt and um one called Four Times That Night, which was a little It was a sexy comedy. Not not not uh dirty sex, just cute. But Baba was great. I loved Baba. And and I've worked also for his son, Lombberto, who was a director. [laughter] You know, when you were making those spaghetti westerns and they were so successful over there and most did not come to the United States and you all were were superstars in Europe, why do you think they weren't accepted or respected in this country?

[00:10:41]mainly no not mainly partially because they were uh most of them were dubbed and the American audiences didn't like dubbed films.

[00:10:50]>> I remember him also I remember people who says how fast he was but I didn't believe it then any more than I do now.

[00:10:57]The only way to get him is from behind.

[00:11:00]>> Did you do your own dubbing? when I had time. If I was busy doing another picture somewhere else, uh then someone else would dub my voice. But I did most of them myself. Also, I dubbed um uh other actors who were >> unavailable.

[00:11:20]>> Who for instance?

[00:11:24]>> I don't want to say.

[00:11:26]>> Oh, [laughter] all right. because uh I remember uh one of the critics said that was his best film. I've never seen him act so so well, but it was my voice. [laughter] >> Now, that's because there were so many of you all over there, were there a lot of opportunities to do dubbing for other films with uh with stars that like yourself maybe didn't have enough time?

[00:11:55]So there was a whole another business opportunity there.

[00:11:58]>> Yes. You said there were like 700 films made. Now all of them didn't make it to to the dubbing market, but there was a lot of dubbing. Most of it was in Rome.

[00:12:08]Uh some in Munich, also in Paris, but it was a a big business. I know a lot of people who made a good living just doing dubbing. Now, when they were shooting the films, because sometimes it was an a Spanish crew with a Italian stars, uh, German, American stars, were they shooting sound at that time or did that all come later in dubbing? Did they did they record the sound as you were shooting or did that prevent them from moving as fast as they needed to do based on the budgets that they had?

[00:12:43]>> The Europeans had no real history of sound.

[00:12:47]uh dubbing was uh was was common mainly because they would do uh co-productions like my first film was a Italian, Spanish, French, German, something else American I guess co-production the first [clears throat] film I did over there I had a scene my first scene in this film five different actors were each speaking their own language five different languages in this scene talk about confusion for an actor who you >> [laughter] >> But um they would often shoot what they would call a Q track, which is a a very poor quality uh sound recording that they could play back later when they were doing the dubbing so the actors could remember what they what they had said.

[00:13:34]But I remember one film where that was financed by the Americans. I got on the set and the second day, I guess it was, I saw this soundman with a little tiny um tape recorder and a and a microphone on the end of a bamboo stick. I said, "What's he doing?" And they said, "He's doing the the the sound the for the play for the playback." I said, "Oh, well, okay." So, I didn't worry about keeping my script because I knew that we had a uh had it recorded. So when we get got to u to dubbing, I said, "Where's the script?" Oh, what had happened was the soundman to save money used the same reel of tape over and over. He just he turned it over and turned it [laughter] over and turn So we had no >> Well, that didn't work too well.

[00:14:23]>> No.

[00:14:24]>> Well, that's probably one that didn't make it over to the States then.

[00:14:27]>> Uh yes, it did.

[00:14:29]>> Okay. It's called >> I know that you're uh looking forward to shooting in September again uh with Robert on the return of El Purro.

[00:14:38]>> Yeah. One thing I've insisted though is that we have a stunt men. Neither of us are [laughter] used to do all my own stunts, but um nope, not anymore.

[00:14:51]>> And and will that be shot in English?

[00:14:53]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:14:54]>> Oh, good.

[00:14:55]>> Yeah. No, it's all it's different now.

[00:14:57]Even Italian productions are shot in English. I remember the uh I was talking to the head of the Italian Actors Union and they were going to go on strike because Italian actors couldn't get a job if they didn't speak English in Italian films.

[00:15:14]>> Well, that slowed things down.

[00:15:16]>> No, it didn't. [laughter] >> I want to thank Brett Hollyy for being here. [applause] Thank you.

[00:15:24]Thank you so much.

[00:15:28]He he made some really really good [applause] spaghetti westerns. Maybe 20 or 30 spaghetti westerns made the cross to come over to the United States and we got to see those and we loved them. But there were close to 700 western films of spaghetti westerns that were shot and now they're gaining respect and we are able to now see them on DVD and even Blu-ray which is great.

[00:15:56]They look gorgeous. A lot of them. They were widescreen with fantastic music.

[00:16:01]And some of them weren't so good, but you know, >> tell me about it.

[00:16:05]>> It doesn't matter. And so, somebody just said, "Tell me about it." And I'm going to have that person come up and tell you about it. His name is Robert Woods.

[00:16:15][applause] Hello, amigo. Good to see you. Grab a mic. How did somebody like you who's like an American actor get to Italy to be part of the original movement of spaghetti westerns?

[00:16:32]>> Well, I got to Paris first and I worked in the theater in Paris and somebody saw a play and took me for my first western to Barcelona company called Balcaza. It was before Clint and it was actually a film before Clint. It was sold to MGM and it sort of opened the genre really.

[00:16:52]So, >> and what was the film and who was the man who spotted you to ask you to go over?

[00:16:55]>> It was Alfonso Belcaza and the film was called Pisto Arizona or El Rancho del Implab or [laughter] the I think the final thing was $5,000 on the Ace. I think the final title was >> Were you signed for the one film or did they have a multiple?

[00:17:18]>> No, they signed he signed me for a to a contract for five pictures. But the first day that I was shooting, we went out in the desert and we we I shot this master's long master of falling off a cliff and getting a horse. I mean really I hit almost hit cocky in this thing.

[00:17:35]And I got up and he said, "Oh, that was really good. Let's do another."

[00:17:39][laughter] And I said, "And I have bruises and I'm actually bleeding." And I said, "If you want to do another, do it yourself."

[00:17:46]Right? [laughter] So that night, I ended up in his office and he ripped my contract in in quarters and threw it in the waste basket. That was it. Few a few weeks later after we finished the film, because we did wrap the film, I went to Madrid and I was uh played Henry Fond's pilot in Battle of the Bulge. Some of you have probably seen that. And uh uh while I was there, I got an agent, William Morris, and uh uh I get a call from Alfonso saying, "We need an extra, we just sold it to MGM.

[00:18:16]We need an extra action scene." And I said, "Call my agent." I love that.

[00:18:24][laughter] So he did. And actually my agent my agent got me u actually $10,000 more than I was paid for the mo movie. show to shoot like three days of stage coach and mud and then I came back and everything was fine and uh I started the career of spaghetti western. So after that first day of shooting this extra stunt thing I went into his office and on my on his desk was my contract taped very nicely on [laughter] filmed in beautiful but dangerously rugged terrain. This spectacular film adds a new dimension to the tradition of great western epics about the wild and heroic adventures of seven brothers. But it's a wonderful it was a wonderful place to work. It was a wonderful place to be. And uh it was just a wonderful place to stay though. Clint wasn't enamored with it. Clint wanted to come back. Every time I talked to Clint, oh look at me under the beard and the hat, but he didn't want to stay. So he came back. His original contract was with Poppy and Columbbo uh to do three films.

[00:19:38]He refused. He came back home. So they sold his contract to Grimmaldi. The 13,000 that he got for the first film became a hund,000 for the for the following film. Grimmaldi came and offered him a h 100,000 to do the picture. And he said, "God, I love Italy. Love the beard. Love this beard."

[00:19:57][laughter] And uh the rest is history. Clint really I mean he popped it bigger than anybody.

[00:20:11][music] >> [music] >> I'm very pleased to be his friend and I'm very pleased that spaghetti westerns were an advent in all our lives.

[00:20:29]>> Now, while you were over there, they they they made so many more of those than we ever imagined over here. and with with American names, even when they weren't Americans, they would give them an Americanized name. I I noticed in in your credits your on one poster it's Robert Wood, on another it's Robert Woods.

[00:20:49]>> Well, the first film that I did, I got to they had it all cut together having a screening of a rough cut really and with credits and everything. And I looked up and it was Robert Wood. I said, "No, my I'm Robert Woods." He said, "I'm not changing the posters."

[00:21:03]And I'm not changing that. So I said, "Okay, I'm Robert Wood." That's how it happened, you know. And then later I was trying to become Robert Woods again.

[00:21:13][laughter] So uh finally it worked sometimes [snorts] and sometimes it didn't because I still had in the end had films for example this film here Blackjack that I did I did in Israel for John Franco Baldinello and he'll always know me as Robert Wood. We did a film I did a film with Billy Burgerer and uh later with him and I look and it's Robert Wood again. I'm trying to get away from that. You know, I lost my ass in Italy. Yeah. [laughter] >> Well, you were born in Colorado on a ranch, so you were already a good hand when you went over there.

[00:21:50]>> Well, I knew how to ride and you know, you grew up in a horse, you know, basically. I don't know. I was a theater actor, but you know, I went there and it was stuff that was natural for me to do really.

[00:22:02]>> Well, as as we look at them here, we're used to westerns with quarter horses and all their horses seem to just prance around a little bit. Is that >> uh disconcerting to a a cowboy?

[00:22:14]>> No. No, because I mean a horse is a horse. It's a horse, of course.

[00:22:20]>> [laughter] >> Well, so they treated you all like kings over there in Italy, didn't they?

[00:22:26]>> Yes. It was like being worshiped somewhere. It's really that it was that good, you know.

[00:22:31]>> Do you miss that?

[00:22:32]>> I do. [laughter] I I do. I do. But but the one thing I do I do really miss is the and I talked about this at that spaghetti western festival we had uh I don't know a couple years ago is the collabor collaborative uh spirit of European pictures. They're like independent pictures. They're not like you know God help you if you touch a light here if you're an actor you know I mean know it it's segreg too segregated Hollywood for my taste but uh it's collaborative and that's what I loved about it. When you left a film, you were leaving your family behind. It was one of those kind of experiences. It It was It was good. It was really good.

[00:23:15]>> Surging conflict and [music] suspense mixed violently with high-spirited action in Seven Guns for the McGregor.

[00:23:23]>> Some of these films, uh, the score meant so much. And I I think you one of your best performances is the Seven Guns for the McGregor's where you're one of the McGregor sons and you're fighting off of course uh a band of uh Mexican bandiditos >> with a bunch of Scots people with with bag pipes and stuff. This was great.

[00:23:44][music] Hey, [music] >> you were terrific in that. And Ino Maronei, the maestro, >> Maricone, but he didn't actually, you know, >> he did it under the name of Dan Vattis, which was one of his pseudonyms. Yeah.

[00:24:14]So, not only did the stars have pseudonyms, but so did the composers. So did the directors.

[00:24:19]>> But the also the other the the wicked truth about all of that is that uh he didn't write the music for Fistful of Dollars.

[00:24:26]>> You're done. [laughter] >> That was done that was done by Alexandra Alexandrroni, the guy who whistles on it. He's the one who composed that that really that really driving music. But they had done he had done a concert with two other composers and they agreed among the three of them that if they do westerns, this is before they did westerns, they were they could share the music that each of them had written. And so that's why Maricone ended up with with that as the theme. Maricone is a brilliant composer. Don't get me wrong.

[00:25:01]I'm not saying that he stole anything.

[00:25:03]They agreed upon this. So, but it it is really Alexander that that wrote the music for us.

[00:25:10]>> Alexander was here and did a performance at the archery with us. Uh there's a a big panel back here. They had a wonderful Sergio Leone exhibit and tribute to him here where his daughter came. Claudia Cardinelli came too. Oh my god.

[00:25:26]>> His son is also a composer, you know.

[00:25:28]Well, not only did he whistle, >> but he did the >> as well.

[00:25:37]>> And he said, usually it was done on different tracks, but he was live and he said, "I'm going to try to do them all at the same time." And and it was a great great performance and the crowd went wild.

[00:25:49]>> A wonderful guy, too. Really terrific human being. Yeah. The music music made these films really if you think about it. You take the music out of most of these films and yeah it's an adventure but the music drove the film. The music that we the composers we had for these things were brilliant. Some of them really >> and it was so different from what had come before was the big western orchestral sound where these had unusual instruments and voices and and and characters. It was as much a part of the film instead of just under uh underscoring of the action. It was another character. That's true. And man, it made it different. It just kicked.

[00:26:30]And just I remember uh in when I was in college, >> it just the music did so much, you know, influence to I don't know good or bad, but walking down the the wooden halls of Stson University in Florida with my cowboy boots on and Spurs in Florida carrying [laughter] not a gun but a Bolex camera, you know, and they thought I was different and they were right. And it's okay. It's okay. But I know that uh one of your films, El Puro, you're doing uh a sequel to. Well, they took me to Al Maria last year to honor me for my work and and they said, "Just as a gag, let's shoot a sequel. Let's let's shoot a sequel to Pos." And I said, "Wow, I got to do all that makeup." No, not doing that again.

[00:27:22]So, I said, "How about El Puro? They shoot me off my horse at the end of the film, but you don't know whether I died or not." So, we did this mock trailer half a day of shooting in the in the village in Leone's village in Almaria and uh it's become so internet successful that we're actually doing the movie and and and Brett Hollyy is playing is playing a sheriff in it. We're doing an ensemble as they say.

[00:27:49]>> Well, we will be looking for that.

[00:27:51]Robert, thank you for being our guest today.

[00:27:53]>> Thank you, Rob. Thank you everyone. Nice to see you. Heat. Heat. [applause] [music] [music]