Rossano Brazzi

Rossano Brazzi was an Italian actor, director, and screenwriter who began as a stage actor and became a matinee idol of Italian cinema before he established himself in Hollywood in the early 1950s. Born in Bologna and raised in Florence from age four, he worked as a lawyer before making his film debut in 1939. His early Italian credits included Tosca (1941) and Eleonora Duse (1948), and he played the professor in Little Women (1949). International fame came with Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), followed by The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Summertime (1955) with Katharine Hepburn, and South Pacific (1958). Later English-language films included The Story of Esther Costello (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), Count Your Blessings (1959), Light in the Piazza (1962), and The Italian Job (1969). He also directed and wrote films in his native Italy, at times credited as Edward Ross.