Keystone-SDA
This content was published on October 17, 2024 – 9:13 pm
(Keystone-ATS) Mitzi Gaynor, the American actress who brought the Broadway musical South Pacific to the big screen with the Italian director Rossano Brazzi, has died at 93.
His spokespersons, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, announced this on the star’s X social network profile.
Gaynor had acted in 1958 with Brazzi in the part of the US Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, singing with her voice (unlike the other actors) the songs that belonged to her in the adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical including the song I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair, which was associated with her for the rest of her life.
Real name Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber, the year before Mitzi had starred with Gene Kelly and Kay Kendall in the musical Les Girls directed by George Cukor. Among other musicals of the 1950s, she had also appeared in Anything Goes (1956) with Bing Crosby and Donald O’Connor, The Joker Is Wild (1957) with Frank Sinatra, and Happy Anniversary (1959) with David Niven and Patty Duke.
Born in Chicago (Illinois) into a family of artists (mother a dancer, father a cellist), after the crisis of film musicals at the beginning of the 1960s she appeared in numerous television specials.
