- Born
- Died
- Birth nameArgentina Ferrau
- Height5′ 3″ (1.60 m)
- Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 31, 1907, Argentina Brunetti began her show business career at the age of three with a walk-on role in the opera "Cavelaria Rusticana," and followed her famous mother Mimi Aguglia's footsteps in the theater, performing supporting roles on stages throughout Europe and South America. In 1937 she was placed under contract to MGM Pictures and began dubbing the voices of Jeanette MacDonald and Norma Shearer into Italian. Next she became a narrator for the Voice of America, interviewing American movie stars for broadcast in Italy. At the same time she began her movie career, debuting in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), as "Mrs. Martini." Throughout her career she also wrote and performed in daily radio shows, became a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association--writing numerous articles on Hollywood personalities--authored books, wrote music and acted in over 57 television programs and 68 movies in which she mainly played multi- ethnic roles.- IMDb Mini Biography By: mariopb@tin.it (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)
- SpouseMiro Brunetti(? - July 1, 1966) (his death, 1 child)
- ChildrenMario Brunetti
- Parents
- At almost 98 years old, she hosted a weekly weblog on the Internet called Argentina Brunetti's Hollywood Stories, in which she wrote about Hollywood of yesterday, today and tomorrow with photos of her with the important stars of the entertainment industry. (www.argentinabrunetti.com). Just before her death she was also writing a novel about her grandmother (Mimi Aguglia) and her life in the international entertainment business.
- Son, Mario, carries on Argentina's web-site, which she continued to host up to the year she died, at age 98.
- Buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, 5835 W. Slauson Ave., Culver City, CA. Over 100 film stars are buried there, such as Rita Hayworth, Bing Crosby, Ray Bolger, John Candy and Bela Lugosi.
- When she came to Hollywood she was hired by MGM to dub the voices of Jeanette MacDonald and Norma Shearer into Italian.
- Husband Miro Brunetti was a foreign correspondent in Hollywood, and she co-founded the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
- [on Broken Arrow (1950)] Jeff Chandler was always extremely nice to me throughout the filming. We were on location for over two months. The weather during the filming was often a problem. One time it hailed so hard we stopped in the middle of a scene and all the cast and crew ran into the nearby tepees, built for the scene, for shelter. During this picture we had over 500 real American Indians with us. I was so well made up as Cochise's wife they all thought I was one of them and kept speaking to me in their language. I just smiled at them and bowed my head.
- I went to Steve McQueen's house to interview him and was surprised with all the security systems he had around, because, at the time, they were almost unheard of. It took me about half an hour to finally gain access to his house. I remember he had a big Harley Davidson motorcycle parked in the driveway.
- I was once invited to Chuck Connors' beautiful home high on a hill off of Mulholland Drive in L.A. with a swimming pool built on stilts hanging over a cliff. His wife invited me to go swimming with her. I politely refused as I was afraid the whole pool would collapse and topple over the hill. Chuck assured me he swam in the pool daily, as part of his exercise routine. But I still wasn't convinced.
- My mother [Mimi Aguglia] was actually born on the stage during the last act of William Shakespeare's 'Othello' in Palermo, Sicily, on December 23, 1884. Her mother was also an actress and was playing Desdemona. During the last act, while Othello was supposed to be choking her to death, she started to scream. She was actually having her baby on the stage. My grandfather jumped out of the prompter's box and yelled, "My son is born!" and was a bit disappointed when he found out it was a girl instead. He wanted to call her Gerolema like his grandfather, but his wife insisted she should be called Mimi.
- For The Tall Men (1955), I played a cameo role with Jane Russell and Clark Gable. While my mother [Mimi Aguglia] played Jane Russell's dueña (chaperone) in Howard Hughes' The Outlaw (1943), I played Jane's seamstress in 'The Tall Men'. I first met Gable in the late '30s at MGM while my husband and I were dubbing films in Italian. Each day we had lunch in the studio commissary. One day I was eating a very tasty dish of rice with mushrooms, when I looked up and saw Clark Gable staring at me from across the room, alone at another table. He gestured to me, pointing to my food, asking if it was good. I answered him in return with gestures indicating how delicious it was. So he ordered the same. Each day for several months, Clark Gable sat alone at his usual table and we played the charade game over the food. In the meantime, Lana Turner was on the opposite side of the room also eating alone each day, but no matter how much my husband tried to get her attention, nothing seemed to work. After over 20 years, when I started working in 'The Tall Men', Clark Gable reminded me of the food charade at MGM.
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