Argentina Brunetti (born Argentina Josefina Ángela Ferraù; August 31, 1907 – December 20, 2005) was an Argentine stage and film actress and writer.
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Early life
Brunetti was born Argentina Ferraù in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Italian parents; her father was Vincenzo "Vicente" Ferraù and her mother was the Sicilian actress Mimi Aguglia. 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. In 1928, she and her family immigrated to the United States.
Career
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.
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. 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.
