Argentina Brunetti
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Argentina Brunetti (August 31, 1907 — December 20, 2005) was an actress and writer born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She began her show business career at the age of three with a walk on role in the opera, Cavalleria Rusticana and followed Mimi Aguglia, her famous mother'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 in 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 debut in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), as Mrs. Martini. With her death, the only non-child actors (e.g. those who played adult characters) known to still be alive as of 2006 (60 years after the film was released) are Virginia Patton, who played Ruth Bailey, George Bailey (James Stewart)'s sister-in-law (the wife of his younger brother, the war hero) and the ubiquitous Charles Lane (b. 1905), who played Mr. Potter's rent collector.
Throughout her varied career she has also written and performed in daily radio shows, became a member of the 'Hollywood Foreign Press Association', writing numerous articles on Hollywood personalities, authored books, written music and acted in over 57 television programs and 68 movies in which she mainly played multi-ethnic roles. She hosted a weekly weblog on the Internet, called Argentina Brunetti's Hollywood Stories, which her son plans to continue running, and has written a biographical novel called In Sicilian Company.
She continued to act well into her 90s, most notably as a relative from the Old World who visits and stays with the (wrong) Barone family on Everybody Loves Raymond.
She moved to Rome in 2004 to be with her family. She died there on December 20, 2005, from natural causes at the age of 98.
