Saul Lockhart grunted and groaned his way from Paris to Hong Kong as a bit part player and character actor. An unexpected job dubbing a film in Paris in the mid-1960s led to an entertaining way of keeping alive while seeing the world. Dubbing in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the actors behind it, remain something of an enigma all these decades later. Pennsylvania-born Saul Lockhart was among the crew of Paris-based and later Hong Kong-based voice actors who brought English-language dialogue to various non-English-language films for overseas export. A few of Mr. Lockhart’s credits include the Hong Kong dubs of: Gamera vs. Barugon (1966), Yog Monster from Space (1970), Battle of Okinawa (1971), Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971), and Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972). In May 2023, Saul Lockhart spoke with Brett Homenick about his dubbing memories on two different continents.

Brett Homenick: Please talk about your early life, where you grew up, and your background.

Saul Lockhart: I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and my background was quite normal. I graduated college as an English major in 1962, left the United States in 1963, went to see the world, and started out in Europe. And that’s where I first got into dubbing, in Paris.

BH: Actually, let’s go back a little bit. I know some people don’t want to share this information, but would you mind sharing your birthdate?

SL: Halloween 1940.

BH: Oh, well, that’s quite an apropos date, given some of the films that you worked on.

SL: (laughs)

BH: As a child, what were some of your hobbies and interests?

SL: Well, sports, and that was pretty much it. Sports, getting through school, girls – just had a very normal life.

BH: What kind of sports did you play?

SL: Not many and not very well, but I played some varsity track and cross country and had a try at swimming and basketball.

BH: Let’s talk about going to university. Where did you go?

SL: Washington & Jefferson College, which is near Pittsburgh.

BH: And what did you study there?

SL: English, mostly, and psychology. And, in those days, it was a very small school – 700 men. No ladies. It was a men’s college. It’s now co-ed and doubled in size. And it’s old. It is the 11th-oldest college in the country, founded in 1781, just after the Revolutionary War, on what was the frontier of the new country.

It still is a liberal arts education. I graduated in 1962 and then went on to graduate school at [the University of California,] Berkeley. I was aiming for an M.A. in English but eventually decided it was not for me. Some friends decided they were going to Europe, and I sold my old junker of a car and joined them. I remember one of the group’s fathers was a travel agent, so we ended up with very cheap tickets on the Holland American [Line] cruise ship the SS Ryndham, New York to Liverpool. That was in 1963, and here I am, all these years later still “abroad.”

BH: So you [never] earned a master’s in English from UC Berkeley?

SL: Correct. I didn’t finish it.

BH: Why did you decide [not to complete the degree]?

SL: I just didn’t want to. I guess I applied to grad school because my friends did. Once I [became] immersed in classes and teaching – I was a TA [teacher’s assistant] to help pay my way – I wasn’t terribly pleased with graduate study. More people crossed Sproul Plaza, the center [of the university], at any given [time] between classes than I had seen in all my years of college.

There were about 20 of us TAs, each with a class of 25 [to] 30 freshman – English 101 – all under one supervising professor. Quite a contrast to my classes at W&J, which probably averaged around 10, except for freshman chemistry, which was more than 50. I was definitely only a few years older than my students.

The first thing you’re told about teaching the freshmen is, whatever the professor who’s running the course says goes. So, if the TAs or students have different opinions, keep them to yourselves.

At W&J, we were expected to query and give opinions, even if we were wrong. We did not parrot a teacher. So I was very uncomfortable in my TA position; I didn’t enjoy the experience.

So, after the first semester, I pulled out. Coincidentally, some friends of mine at Berkeley were caretaking a ranch down the coast near Carmel, so I joined them. We had chores to do, and some of those included horses. That was fun. Over dinner one night, someone said, “Let’s go to Europe.” Sounded like a reasonable thing to do, and off we went.

BH: I believe you said that you got involved in dubbing there?

SL: Yeah, in Paris. And I was just thinking how I got involved. I can only assume that somebody told me about it at the hotel I was staying in on Rue Mazarine in the Quartier Latin because there were a lot of foreigners there, and everybody had something going on.

BH: What kind of films did you dub in Europe?

SL: Well, mostly European or Japanese. So the vast majority were French or German or Spanish or Italian. A lot of spaghetti Westerns shot in Morocco or Algeria or Spain. I have a high-timbre voice, so I rarely got a meaty part. But I did lots of character parts – old men, children, that sort of thing, a lot of extra parts and ambience [background] scenes. So I kept working.

There were three or four different companies, but I can’t remember their names, though I remember one was just off the Champs-Élysées, and another was at the old Billancourt Studios in the outskirts of Paris in Boulogne. At Billancourt, we did a lot of post-sync, which is really dubbing, but they’re still finishing the film. And we managed a few extra parts in the movies being shot there – mostly crowd scenes.

BH: Were they all based in Paris, or where were they?

SL: Well, the ones I worked for were in and around Paris. Every so often – maybe once every six months or so – a few of us would be sent to Rome or Madrid – I can’t remember Germany, but certainly Rome and Madrid – to do a film. And London.

BH: For the European dubs, do you remember any of your fellow voice actors from that time?

SL: Not really.

BH: What were the conditions usually like – what kind of studio?

SL: They were fun; they were excellent. There were quite a few studios. It was a good way to learn French, too, because a lot of the instructions were in French, except the script, of course, so that worked out quite well.

BH: For the European dubs, typically, how many takes would there be, and what was the process like?

SL: Well, the people that were hired, the actors, were about 90% American. I remember one or two weren’t particular American accents. They were all ages and living in Paris. This was the early sixties – 1963, ’64, ’65, that sort of [time], and there were a lot of people living there, not just Americans. Some going to school – you know, it was a popular place to live, to spread your wings.

BH: I understand, but I guess my question is more like, when you were actually recording the dubbing, how many takes would there be?

SL: I guess the average would be two or three.

BH: The conditions of the studio, would you say that they were kind of low-budget?

SL: They weren’t high-budget. It was the days of tape, not digital. I remember the technicians saying, “We can move it [the tape] forward [or backward] if the actors were slightly off.” The film was cut into loops of 30 seconds or so. They had a little soundproof room within the studio, like a three-sided box with a top.

You would go in, alone or in a group, and that would create a certain kind of sound, particularly sound used for the ambience, background noise. Usually, we all crowded around one mike. Some of the sound effects were quite rudimentary, but they worked.

BH: Do you remember any examples of the sound effects that they made?

SL: Well, literally, like the back of a theater – you take a big sheet of tin and rub it together, and that would be thunder. [With] a certain type of drum, you’d have horse beats. But that would be usually a different loop. I mean, we would do the voice, and then they might throw in something else. We weren’t there mainly for the sound effects. Very occasionally, the sound effect came in while we were there. Most of the time, they were just interested in getting the voice.

BH: But you don’t remember any specific titles or films that you dubbed, especially from Japan?

SL: No. Most of the Japan[ese] films I did in Hong Kong. I remember dubbing Cat Ballou (1965), with Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin, quite vividly. I remember it because we did it in English, and then we did it again in French. The producers wanted the French with American accents, as opposed to French actors. So we did the film twice.

BH: Why did you have to dub it in English?

SL: Well, we did the English version because it was being released abroad [to English-speaking countries], and I guess the producers thought it would be funnier for the local French and European releases to have American-accented French.

BH: Do you remember what you played in Cat Ballou?

SL: It might have been [actor] Stubby Kaye, but I certainly didn’t sing the ballad with Kaye and Nat King Cole!

I also remember La 317ème Section (1965) because I was the lead, and that was rare for me. The English [title] would be The 317th Platoon or “Platoon 317” or something like that, and it was set in the First Indochina War, which the French fought.

I played the lieutenant – a shavetail, wet-behind-the-ears, inexperienced, just-off-the-boat officer, heavily dependent on his grizzled old sergeant. That was in the war in Indochina the French fought, before the Americans had their own Indochina war. It was great; he had a high voice, high timbre. When he got scared, it was even higher. That’s all I remember. I found it on Netflix one day in the original French – I’ve never been able to find the dubbed version.

That was the only lead I played. It was so rare! (laughs) In all the other films, it was me and a half a dozen other guys or gals. We cleaned up all the children or the old men or the grunts and groans. It was a good living.

The post-syncing at Billancourt once led to extra parts in two films: The Sandpiper (1965) and Trois Chambres à Manhattan [Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965), directed by Marcel Carné]. This was extraordinary.

In Sandpiper, they were looking all over the studio for people who could dance the hora, Israel’s famous folk song. The setting was the famous Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur, California. This film starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, so we spent many days at Billancourt on set, in the canteen waiting, and later in the studio.

In Trois Chambres, which was shot in New York City, they had a recreated a diner on set and of course needed Americans as background customers and waitstaff, etc., as the French stars Annie Girardot and Maurice Ronet sat at a table and chatted away in French to each other and in English to everyone else.

It was an interesting post-syncing experience.

BH: So how did you get to Vietnam after that?

SL: Well, in the summers, I’d take off because, in July and August, Paris closes. So I’d sometimes leave a bit early. But, anyway, I taught waterskiing in Spain, in Ibiza, which is next to Majorca in the Balearic Islands, for a couple years.

Then an old mate of mine in Paris one day said, “Are you going back to Spain?” I said, “Well, probably.” And he said, “Well, I was thinking about opening a waterskiing school in Mykonos,” which was in Greece. I said, “OK, let’s go to Greece.” So we went to Greece, and he bought a boat. I was teaching, he drove, and we spent the summer there.

Somebody I knew mentioned that it would be terrific to go to Vietnam. The war was just starting; this was ’66. The war was just expanding, and every young writer has to go to a war or some other stupid thing like that. I knew an editor in Paris, and he wrote me a letter. I had a couple of friends in Geneva, and so I hitched up to Geneva and got there just as the Vietnamese consul was literally unpacking his bags. So I helped carry them in, and I asked in French, “Are you giving out visas?” He said, “Oui,” as he searched around a bag, got a big stamp out, [and] gave me a visa.

I understand it was very difficult to get visas, but I got one. And I hitchhiked to India. I got as far as Calcutta, hitchhiking through Iran, Iraq. It was great; it was, well, I guess the hippie version of the Silk Road – dozens of old Volkswagen buses and jalopies going each way in buses, and I just moved along with the herd.

When I got to Calcutta, [I] couldn’t go over land through Burma, so I had to fly to Saigon.

BH: When you arrived, what were the circumstances? Share some of your experiences there.

SL: Well, I was quite naïve. I had no idea what Vietnam was or where it was or why it was – certainly no idea about war, or this war, and of course had no idea [what] the United States was doing there. But, anyway, I managed to get through immigration and customs.

A kindly New York Times [reporter] gave me a ride into town because I had no idea that there were various layers to the airport. [At] Tan Son Nhat [International] Airport, you go through one checkpoint; maybe there’s a mile or something between the next checkpoint. I just assumed it was like a normal airport – you line up on the curb, and you get in the bus or taxi or something.

Anyway, he gave me a lift into town. And a friend of mine from Paris knew somebody and [had] written a letter to him at [the] AP. I went and looked the guy up, and he offered me some freelance work and put me on to someone who had a flat to share. He showed me where MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] was, where the daily press conferences were, and, most important, how to sign up [and] get accredited with both the Vietnamese and American military. The next thing I knew, I was a correspondent, and I was for about a year and a half.

And then I got very ill; I had jaundice. I also needed a rest because this was my second illness – I also had encephalitis and was medevaced to Clark Hospital, USAF, in the Philippines. In my ignorance, I thought Hong Kong, being British, would have British doctors, which I assumed were superior [to] other doctors in the region. Such prejudice. Little did I know!

Again, a mate of mine who worked for ABC said, “If you’re going to Hong Kong, maybe you want to dub.” He used to dub in Paris, too. I said, “Great! How do you do that?” So, anyway, he gave me the name of Ted Thomas.

And I ended up in infamous Chungking Mansions for a week and went to see him at Radio Hong Kong and got hired on the Topics show, which was a morning news feature program. A day or so later, I wandered in, shut the door, and said, “I hear you also do some moonlighting dubbing. I used to dub in Paris. If you need anything, I’d love to make some extra money.” He said, “You’re in.” That was about 1966, maybe, ’67 – something like that.

BH: Before we continue with the dubbing part, going back to Vietnam, were there any memorable experiences there – or anything that you would like to share about covering Vietnam at the time?

SL: It was absolutely terrifying, and I’m very happy to be alive. Don’t forget I had absolutely no idea of what was going on, right? You’re talking about the city or the cities or the war in general. I had absolutely no idea. I learned from various people, and one of the problems I had, which was also positive, was that, if you put me in a tuxedo, freshly bathed and combed and brushed and this and that, I still look like I’ve just come out of an overnight bus.

So this mate of mine gave me an old set of fatigues and some boots, [and] I scrounged a hat. He also gave me a camera and pointed me in the direction of the war. I also had a beard and longish hair. You could usually tell a new person, a newcomer, right away.

His advice to me was, “Just keep your mouth shut and follow everybody because you look like you’ve been here since the French war.” And I did. The next thing I knew, I was out getting shot at in Cù Chi, which is only 25 kilometers from Saigon, a very short helicopter ride out of Tan Son Nhat, but long enough for me to pee in my pants because the gunners test-fired the machine guns, and I thought we were being shot at. These days, Cù Chi is known for its Viet Cong tunnel complex, which is open to tourists.

That was pretty scary, and that’s how it went for about a year. But I got a lot more savvy over the months and years and knew a little more what I was doing. I still had really no preparation for it. I could write, so I wrote stories, and I photographed, and kept alive. And had a good time. It was a very exciting place to be.

BH: And that’s when you ended up in Hong Kong because you had jaundice.

SL: Yes.

BH: Where were your stories published?

SL: Oh, it was wire service, so there were no bylines.

BH: Well, let’s go [back] to dubbing and your meeting with Ted Thomas. In your initial dealings with Ted, what were your impressions of him as a person at the time?

SL: Well, he did me some very big favors. Sadly, he just passed away recently in Thailand, aged in his 90s.

BH: The end of last year [in 2022].

SL: End of last year, OK. How many years is that? Sixty-seven to 2022 – long time. I’ve known his wives, I’ve known his kids, and he did me many favors. First of all, he hired me at Radio Hong Kong and gave me a job. Since he was a government servant, he kept getting me visas to stay in Hong Kong. And then finally we moonlighted, and I made a living dubbing, as well. So I have no complaints.

BH: Do you remember any of the movies that you dubbed in Hong Kong?

SL: Well . . . I’m just trying to think of the series.

BH: Zatoichi?

SL: We did the Zatoichi series – the blind samurai. It was Japanese starring Shintaro Katsu, one of the country’s top actors. Oh, and The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), which was a Hong Kong movie starring [Jimmy] Wang Yu.

I don’t know – we just did movie after movie after movie at Shaw Brothers and Raymond Chow’s studios and later at Andre Morgan’s studios. He had the contract on the Bruce Lee films, I think, and we worked all night.

BH: Do you remember any of the Godzilla movies?

SL: Yeah, yeah. Great fun. Lots of screaming and yelling and grunting in the little soundproof box! Shouted lines all crowded around a mike.

BH: Do you remember any characters that you played in any of these films?

SL: No, I don’t remember. I mean, my voice, as you can hear, is still high. Well, Asians tend to have a higher timbre, so I got a couple more parts. But, again, younger people, children, older people, as opposed to the leading man, leading woman. And there just were dozens and dozens of them. We worked two, three nights a week and on the weekend for years.

BH: What were the hours that you dubbed?

SL: Well, since we all worked days, I’d hop on my motorbike, as did Ron Oliphant, after Radio Hong Kong and head out to Shaw Brothers, which was in the New Territories, or Raymond Chow’s studios, and we worked to two, three in the morning. Come back, go to work the next day.

BH: With Axis International – I think that’s what Ted called his company at the time…

SL: Don’t know.

BH: Do you remember how many takes would be done?

SL: How many takes? I don’t remember. I’d suppose three or four. I don’t know offhand.

BH: Let’s talk about some of the people you worked with. You mentioned Ron Oliphant – what memories do you have of Mr. Oliphant?

SL: Well, Ron was a partner, a silent partner, to Ted, I believe. So it was their company, so they were both “the boss.” Ron wrote most of the scripts, too, if I recall.

But one personal thing about Ron. We were dubbing one weekend – I don’t know the name of the place, but it was in deepest, darkest Tsim Sha Tsui, which is a section of Kowloon, right across the harbor from Central, but behind the hotels and all the fancy shops where the tourists go. We parked our motorbikes on a little island in the middle of the street, which housed a public toilet block. And we’d start working at 8:00 a.m. or so.

So I pulled up on my little 125cc bike. Ron had a big 1,000cc bike. We were both a bit early, and he turned to me and said, “Have you ever had congee?” I had no idea what congee was, so I said no but soon discovered congee’s rice porridge. So we went to a little hole in the wall across from the studio, and he said, “This place serves the best in Hong Kong.” I had no idea if it did or didn’t, but it was delicious.

And, since we dubbed at that place, for the next 10 or 15 years, we were there maybe once a week. Quite often, we were there early in the morning on the weekends. I had my congee there for breakfast, and I picked up a taste for it and the various forms of it to this day.

BH: Very little is known about Ron. What was his background? Could you tell me anything about his background?

SL: Both Ted and he were English. Ron was married to Gayle, who was an American. I don’t know how they met, but he was English, I’m pretty sure.

BH: Linda Masson, Ted’s former wife, told me that he was a schoolteacher. Is that something that you recall?

SL: Might have been. I don’t know. I never knew him, except he was in the civil service. When I knew him through dubbing, he was a civil servant but not [with] Radio Hong Kong. I can’t remember what branch. It might have been the Colonial Secretary, which was the executive, so to speak, that ran the government.

Ted, I know, was ex-Royal Navy; that’s how he first came to Hong Kong. Ron had a show on Radio Hong Kong, as well. I think he had a music show, but I’m not sure.

BH: Of course, there were many other people who worked there. One name that Linda told me about was Bob Toole, and that they [he and Ted Thomas] had a split. Do you remember [the] name Bob Toole?

SL: Yeah, very much so. I knew him very well. I mean, he’s passed away a long time now – and his wife, Lily. But we knew them quite well. I think Bob worked for Ted writing scripts, and I know of the bust-up, but don’t remember [the] details.

BH: Apparently, he [Bob Toole] split away from Ted, and Ted felt that he was disloyal to him, or something like that.

SL: It could well be. I don’t know.

BH: So who was Bob Toole? What do you remember about him?

SL: [He was an] American, married to an Englishwoman named Lily. I can’t remember how he came to Hong Kong, but he was there for years and years. I thought he was somehow associated with the Godown nightclub in Kowloon, but I don’t remember how.

I remember visiting Bob and Lily in Spain, too, years later in Ibiza in the ‘70s or ‘80s. The Tooles were in Tokyo for a while before Hong Kong. I don’t know what he did in Tokyo, but he lived there for quite a while. I don’t know much about how he got there.

BH: When you knew him in Hong Kong, and, when you dubbed with him, was that for Ted’s company, or was that elsewhere?

SL: Probably Ted’s because, by the time Matthew [Oram] got his company established – Matthew dubbed for a while before he established his own company – Bob was probably long gone.

Matthew ran his own company – and evidently did very well. But I think, as Ted and Ron slowed down or business got bad or something, Matthew picked up the slack to where he became the biggest dubber.

BH: There’s also a lot of other people, of course. There’s Chris Hilton, Warren Rooke – I mean, we could go down the list.

SL: Chris worked for Radio Hong Kong with us but not on our show. Warren was the boss under Ted for Topics, our twice-daily radio show. Barry Haigh also worked for Topics; we all dubbed. So we were all moonlighting, from the boss on down, so to speak.

Cristina Stuart, who was the secretary, dubbed, too. She now lives in L.A. Barry Haigh, 30 years ago, said, “I’m going to Canada,” and disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. Chris [Hilton], I think, is still alive in England, the last I heard – or at least I haven’t heard he passed away. Michael Kaye was another RHK employee, but not [for] Topics, who dubbed. He worked for RHK, but on a different show.

Carol Levine was an American. She did a lot of voices, but I lost touch with her 30 years ago or so.

BH: Did you happen to have a chance to see the YouTube videos [featuring clips of unidentified Hong Kong voice actors] I sent you a while back?

SL: Yeah, I did.

BH: Did you recognize any of the voices?

SL: No. I thought one was Carol, but I’m not sure. I didn’t recognize any of the voices.

She [Carol Levine] did have a heavy American accent. Maybe she could do English or Irish – I don’t know. But she was an American, and she talked with a very heavy New York-type accent.

I’m just trying to think of other names. So, at Radio Hong Kong, we had – well, if you count Ron because he also did a radio show – Ted, Ron, Chris, Warren, Barry, myself, Cristina Stuart – I don’t know if Jenny May dubbed, but she certainly was on the scene. That’s about all I can remember.

BH: With Ted, you were never one of the leads; you were always kind of like a side character.

SL: I was always a back-up – or rarely a lead. If it was a lead, it was small – something that could be disguised because of my voice, the timbre of my voice. Because, in those days, the lead had to have a tough baritone. It had to have a “lead” voice, and mine wouldn’t do.

BH: Did you work for Matthew and Barry’s company?

SL: Yeah.

BH: Do you remember what they called the company at the time?

SL: I thought it was Matthew Oram something.

BH: What were the differences between Ted’s company and their company?

SL: Well, they seemed to have a lock on Raymond Chow, where Ted had a lock on Shaw Brothers.

BH: But, in terms of the style…

SL: It was about the same. We all learned together.

BH: What could you tell me about Matthew and Barry?

SL: I really didn’t distinguish. From the actor’s point of view, someone rings you up and says, “Hey, are you free Wednesday night or Saturday morning?” And you say yes or no, or, “I’m working for Ted, but I can get there by about noon,” or something like that. And pretty much all you cared about was that and getting paid.

I had my motorbike; other guys had different means of getting around, and we just went.

BH: When would you say you were dubbing? That was from 1967 until when?

SL: I’d say ’67 until – oh, it tapered off in the ‘90s. I don’t remember the final thing, but I remember, all of a sudden, either I wasn’t being asked, or the industry sort of tapered off. I’m not sure which.

BH: So you lived in Hong Kong during all that time?

SL: Yeah, I lived in Hong Kong for 35 years. I left in September 2002.

BH: When you were dubbing throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, did you work with Rik Thomas?

SL: Yeah! There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.

BH: What do you remember about Rik Thomas?

SL: What do I remember about Rik… A strange guy. Very nice, very hospitable. “Strange” isn’t the right word because that’s negative, and I don’t mean that. Forgot all about Rik. I don’t know much about him personally.

He lived in the N.T. [New Territories], I think.

BH: Did you happen to know anything about his background? He’s also someone who’s a figure that nobody knows really much about.

SL: That’s true. No, he sort of came in – I don’t know if he worked for Radio Hong Kong or got through because I left Radio Hong Kong in the early ‘70s and got a different job. But the show still stayed on. So Rik may have started working for Ted in Radio Hong Kong – I don’t know.

BH: There’s some disagreement about how Rik’s name is spelled. I think most people spell it R-I-K.

SL: That’s what I thought. Is it different? I thought it was R-I-K.

BH: Well, some people thought it was R-I-C-K, but most people seem to think it was R-I-K, so I just wanted to ask you.

SL: Well, that’s what I thought. I never wrote his checks, so I wouldn’t know! (laughs)

BH: (laughs) What kind of jobs did you have after radio?

SL: Well, after RHK, I went to a PR job, and it didn’t work out very well. I knew the guy quite well, and he said, we got money and [a] company, and we could use you. I said OK. Bottom line, he paid more, and he didn’t care what I did. I mean, I could freelance, write articles, and dub. He wasn’t worried if you made extra money. So I worked for him – I can’t remember his name, but he was a Canadian. And I lasted maybe a year or so.

And then I got a job at a magazine called Off Duty as a deputy editor. I worked there from 1970 [to] ‘73. This was a magazine aimed at American troops and sailors and Marines stationed in Asia. This was the early ‘70s, so, in those days, the G.I.s and USN [United States Navy] flooded into Hong Kong on R&R. [The] Vietnam War only ended in ‘[7]5, but the harbor always had a couple of ships in and a lot of sailors and Marines and soldiers.

I then worked for another PR company – Lee & Williams out of Tokyo – and continued to freelance. In 1980, I was appointed deputy editor of Cathay Pacific’s in-flight magazine, Discovery. In 1982, I joined the Hong Kong Trade Development Council as an editor-in-chief. The TDC was one of the biggest publishers in Hong Kong, and I had about 14 magazines under my belt and two newspapers.

So I stayed there 13 years till 1995 when I was headhunted by HKU [the University of Hong Kong]. When I went to HKU, I also got housing, which was a big thing in Hong Kong. HKU was a good contract, [but] new people took over, and then the whole thing collapsed. The plans for the new, professionally-run publishing program collapsed, so my contract was not renewed. That was the end of 1998.

And then I went freelance and worked for a lot of people, including the Foreign Correspondents’ Club; I was their editor-in-chief up until I left in 2002. I was also the editorial director for a design company in Hong Kong, and we did quite a few books in HK for corporate clients. I also taught writing and English.

BH: Is that why you left Hong Kong, because of that situation?

SL: No. We got married in ’71. I’m married to an Australian. She was a teacher there – a primary school teacher – and at a certain time we decided, “Well, maybe we should move on.” We looked all over Asia and also Australia. Eventually, we decided Australia would be a wonderful country to live in and grow old in. Our kids were adults and living independently Down Under.

I did not want to go back to my own country, which was the US of A. So our children were grown, in their twenties, and living in Australia. When you go into the consulate and ask permission to get a permanent visa, I guess, like all the other consulates, they want to know when you got married. Did you get married in Wan Chai to a bargirl the night before just to get a new citizenship?

We’d been married about 25 years, so it was very easy for me just to keep ticking the boxes and get a permanent visa. So we moved here and never looked back. It’s great living down here. I was offered Australian citizenship and was naturalized in 2005. So I’m a dual national. And here we are.

BH: Going back to Ted Thomas, because I know you worked for him for a while, what else could you share about his personality or any specific memories that you have of him?

SL: A lot of people were pissed off with Ted, particularly the number of wives he went through or whatever, or being a ladies’ man. But for me personally he did me several favors, starting at the very beginning, hiring me. And I’ve never had any problems. We were always good friends, and that was pretty much it.

You know, he was always there. I could ring him up, or he could ring me up. We could meet at the FCC – or the Hong Kong Club occasionally – but most[ly] the FCC or the HK Cricket Club, and have some drinks and talk, be friends. So I don’t have any complaints.

If you looked at the ledger, I owe him more than he owes me.

BH: (laughs) Would you say that he was the person from the dubbing world that you knew the best?

SL: I wouldn’t say that. Well, maybe. I don’t know. Certainly wasn’t all that personally friendly with Ron, though he was very good to me. Barry Haigh, I was friendly with. Rik. Certainly Chris, Warren, [and] Cris. We were all friendly because we all worked together. I mean, it was very incestuous, right?

We were all working in one room – Ted had his own little room – on a radio program, and then we’d disappear and spend all night together at [the] dubbing studio. But, anyway, we got along quite well. We saw each other quite a lot after we all left the various professions and moved out to various places.

I’d always look Ted up when I visited Hong Kong before he moved out. He moved into Thailand. He got very ill, and he moved to Thailand.

BH: Obviously, you had the long overnight sessions dubbing. Do you have any memories that stick out or anything funny or interesting that happened from that time?

SL: Well, by the time [it’s] three or four in the morning, and you’re eating whatever sandwiches were prepared at lunchtime. You’re punchy. There’s no alcohol, so you’re drinking instant coffee, tea, or water, and you’re just absolutely punchy, which is not very good for the takes, the dubbing, because you would end up making noise. So things would collapse into chaos sometimes. Anyway, no, I don’t have anything specific. It’s been too long.

Cydney [O’Sullivan] – Ron and Gayle’s daughter – she did a couple of kids’ parts with her brother, but it was pretty hard for the kids. We were working through the night, so occasionally on a weekend they would show up or something. But I haven’t talked to Cydney – we’ve exchanged a couple emails, but we actually haven’t gotten together. Gayle comes to Australia to visit Cydney, but we have not been in touch or crossed paths. She’s remarried now, I think.

[on fellow Hong Kong dubber Peter Boczar]

I’m trying to remember how I knew Peter. Again, dubbing. I don’t know whether we met at the FCC, or we met at the studio: “Hi, my name is…” type [of] thing. He’s still in Hong Kong. I do remember he ran a PR company, a big international one, if I recall.

Posting [post-sync] means dubbing before a film’s released. So quite often they mouthed it. Sometimes the mouthing didn’t work, and sometimes the actual sound didn’t work. Depending on what problem there was on the set, the sound on film didn’t work. It’s cheaper to shoot silent and then dub it, so there’s a lot of that.

BH: When you were dubbing in Europe, was that during the day?

SL: Sometimes day, sometimes night. I mean, it didn’t bother me because I had no job. So they’d say, “Show up here at whatever time.” And it was blocks. We got half-days, so you’d come in at 9:00, and they’d tell you you’ll be working for a half-day, or you’ll be working for a full day. It was rare at night because actors were unionized in France.

But there was some work overnight if they had problems, and they had to get the film completed. It rarely included me. Mostly, it was just blocks of time. Whether they need you for 10 minutes or the full four hours, you get paid a half-day because it was all union. It was fun.

The other part of it was, all the dubbers were extras in the movie industry. So we all managed to get parts in various films that were being shot in Paris. Didn’t matter the language, we were there in the background. So we bounced back and forth between the suburbs and the city, doing that. We kept alive; it was fun – while we wrote the great American novel or great American play or whatever we were doing.

BH: Living the life of an artist at the time.

SL: Well, I thought I was. Looking back, it was just fun. I’m not so sure it was artistic. I remember a couple of painters I met, lots of writers, and everybody’s smoking. So how good can it be? But I don’t remember any great names coming out. Like, if I lived in the ’20s and ‘30s, and I was still alive, I could say, “Ah, I remember Monet, Picasso, etc.,” or whoever it was. But I don’t remember any names. But that’s what it was – it was fun. It was part of the pilgrimage of growing up, at least in my case.

Anyway, I went off to see the world, and here I am in my eighties, living in Sydney. Australia is a wonderful place to grow old. We made the right choice when we left Hong Kong and headed south. Of course, the tyranny of distance that is Australia, plus COVID, has certainly slowed my “still seeing the world” plans, but I’m confident we’ll get in a couple more trips.