Mimi Aguglia

Mimi Aguglia, born Girolama Aguglia on 21 December 1884 in Palermo, was an Italian actress whose career spanned European and American stage, Hollywood film, and radio. Her birth took place in the wings of the St. Cecile Theatre in Palermo while her mother, actress Giuseppina Di Lorenzo Aguglia, was performing the role of Desdemona in Othello. Her father, Ignazio Aguglia, was also an actor. Aguglia died on 31 July 1970 in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 85.

Having grown up in a theatrical family, Aguglia did not pursue formal training. As she told The New York Times in 1908, she considered herself born an artist by virtue of her parentage. From a young age she toured Europe, North Africa, and South America as a performer. In 1908 she appeared in London in the Sicilian drama La zolfara, as well as in Cavalleria rusticana and Morte civile. That same year she made her American stage debut starring in Malia, a Sicilian tragedy. She returned to New York in 1913, performing Salome and Electra in Italian with her own company. Writer Djuna Barnes remarked on her 1913 American appearances, and the writer Edmondo de Amicis had previously described her as "a hundred demons in a little body with an angel face." To expand her opportunities on the American stage, Aguglia studied English.

Her single Broadway credit was Into the Whirlwind, which played during the 1919–1920 season. From the 1930s onward she worked steadily as a character actress in Hollywood, frequently cast as immigrant matriarchs. Her film appearances included The Last Man on Earth (1924), Primavera en otoño (1933), The Outlaw (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Carnival in Costa Rica (1947), Cry of the City (1948), That Midnight Kiss (1949), The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950), Deported (1950), Right Cross (1950), Cuban Fireball (1951), and The Rose Tattoo (1955). In 1926 she recorded two songs in Italian for the Columbia label.

Aguglia also maintained a presence in American radio. In the early 1940s she appeared on The Goldbergs on CBS, and she broadcast in Italian at radio station WOV. In 1906 she married director Vincenzo Ferraú, with whom she had three children, two of whom went on to work in radio. Her daughter Argentina Brunetti, born in Buenos Aires in 1907, became an actress and lived until 2005. Ferraú died in 1942.