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Argentina Brunetti

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Argentina Brunetti
Brunetti in The Fighter (1952)
Born
Argentina Josefina Ángela Ferraù

(1907-08-31)August 31, 1907
Buenos Aires, Argentina
DiedDecember 20, 2005(2005-12-20) (aged 98)
Rome, Italy
OccupationActress
Years active1910–2002
Spouse(s)Vladimiro Brunetti
(m. 1936; died 1966)
Children1

Argentina Brunetti (born Argentina Josefina Ángela Ferraù[1]; August 31, 1907 – December 20, 2005)[2] was an Argentine stage and film actress and writer.

Biography

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Brunetti was born Argentina Ferraù in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Italian parents;[3] her mother was the Sicilian actress Mimi Aguglia.[4] She began her show-business career at the age of three with a walk-on role in the opera Cavalleria rusticana and followed in the footsteps of her mother, performing supporting roles on stage throughout Europe and South America.[2] In 1928 she and her family entered the U.S.

In 1937, she was placed under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and began dubbing the voices of Jeanette MacDonald and Norma Shearer into Italian. She became a narrator for the Voice of America, interviewing American movie stars for broadcast in Italy. At the same time, she made her movie debut in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) as Mrs. Maria Martini.[5]

Brunetti wrote and performed in daily radio shows; she became a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, writing numerous articles on Hollywood personalities; she authored books, wrote music, and appeared in nearly 60 television programmes and almost 70 films.[5] She hosted a weekly weblog on the Internet called Argentina Brunetti's Hollywood Stories, which her son plans to continue running, and wrote a biographical novel called In Sicilian Company. She continued to act into her nineties, most notably as a relative from the Old World who visits and stays with the (wrong) Barone family in a 1998 episode of Everybody Loves Raymond; her last role was in 2002.

Marriage

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She wed Miro Brunetti, a foreign correspondent in Hollywood. The two helped to co-found the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The couple had one son, Mario. Miro Brunetti died in 1966. Argentina Brunetti never remarried.

Last years and death

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She moved to Rome in 2004 to be with her family and passed away on December 20, 2005, aged 98.

Filmography

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References

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  1. ^ Baptism act
  2. ^ a b "Argentina Brunetti". The Independent. London. January 2, 2006. Archived from the original on November 1, 2017. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  3. ^ Her father was "Vicente" Ferraù.
  4. ^ Estavan, Lawrence (1991). The Italian Theatre in San Francisco. Wildside Press LLC. p. 99. ISBN 9780893704643. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
  5. ^ a b Martone, Eric (2016). Italian Americans: The History and Culture of a People. ABC-CLIO. p. 288. ISBN 9781610699952. Retrieved November 1, 2017.
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