MovieChat Forums > Jason King (1971) Discussion > Why was Shane Rimmer not credited?

Why was Shane Rimmer not credited?


One of the reviews asks this question.

The simple answer is that when an actor is dubbed with another actor's voice (as opposed to voice artists in animations) the voice actor is almost never credited.
I suspect that this is/was partly to avoid drawing attention to the artifice, partly to avoid potentially awkward questions about the reason.

This was, to my knowledge, never even done when Jack Hawkins was dubbed. It was widely known that, in his post-throat operation films, he had to be dubbed - not least because he was a frequent interviewee on TV, but the actors who dubbed him, usually Charles Gray or Robert Rietty, were hardly ever, if ever, credited.

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It actually happens a lot. Ursula Andress was dubbed in Dr No, Daniella Bianchi in From Russia with Love, Gert Frobe and Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger, Adolfo Celi in Thunderball, and so on and so on. If it's done well and the actor isn't particularly well known the viewer doesn't normally notice (audiences in 1960 wouldn't have noticed that because the producers didn't consider the then little-known Peter O'Toole's voice masculine enough, his voice in The Savage Innocents had been dubbed by Robert Rietty). But if it's the distinctive voice of a well-known actor - or you know what the other actor really sounds like - it's much more noticeable; as in the case of Geoffrey Keen dubbing William Mervyn in Carve Her Name With Pride (1958), Patrick Allen dubbing Leon Greene in The Devil Rides Out (1968) or June Whitfield dubbing Valerie Leon in Carry On Girls (1973). Shane Rimmer's voice is so distinctive it's easily recognisable even when Rimmer himself isn't onscreen (as in Diamonds Are Forever, in which his unmistakable voice is heard over a tannoy), or - as the case of Jason King - it's issuing from a different actor.

While we're on the subject, the reason why George Lazenby is so much better in the scenes in which he's impersonating Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty's Secret Service than he is anywhere else in the film is because he's been dubbed by the actor who actually played Sir Hilary: George Baker.

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