Rafaela Ottiano

Rafaela Ottiano
Rafaela Ottiano in She Done Him Wrong.jpg
Publicity still of Rafaela Ottiano for She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Born(1888-03-04)4 March 1888
Died15 August 1942(1942-08-15) (aged 54)
Resting placeSt. Michael's Cemetery, Boston
OccupationActress
Years active1924–1942
From the original Broadway production of Grand Hotel, L-R: Henry Hull, William Nunn, Eugenie Leontovich, Lester Alden, and Rafaela Ottiano (1930).

Rafaela Ottiano (4 March 1888 – 15 August 1942) was an Italian-American stage and film actress.

Early life

Rafaela Ottiano was born in Venice, Italy. She immigrated to the United States with her parents and was processed at Ellis Island in 1910. (Another source says that she and her sister, Maria Francesca, arrived in New York on April 30, 1899.)

Ottiano was named for a sister, Rafaela Bellizia Ottiano, who was born in Boston in 1886 and died in infancy. Their parents were Antonio Ottiano, a musician, and his wife, Maddalena Polcari Ottiano. The couple also had three sons, Pasquale, James, and Augustino. The family lived in Boston.

Ottiano worked as a saleslady in a New York City department store before she began her acting career.: 163 

Career

Ottiano began acting at age 18 and established herself as a stage actress in Europe before arriving in Hollywood[citation needed] in 1924 and appearing in American motion pictures. She appeared on Broadway in Sweeney Todd (1924), the Mae West play Diamond Lil (1928), and the play version of Grand Hotel (1930).

Ottiano's first film was the John L. McCutcheon-directed drama The Law and the Lady (1924) with Len Leo, Alice Lake, and Tyrone Power, Sr.

Ottiano was part of the original 1928 Broadway cast of the hit play Diamond Lil, written by and starring Mae West. She reprised her role as Rita when the play was adapted for the movie She Done Him Wrong (1933), directed by Lowell Sherman.

Throughout the 1930s, she often specialized in roles as sinister, malevolent, or spiteful women, such as her role in the Tod Browning-directed horror film The Devil-Doll (1936), opposite Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan.

Other notable film roles for Ottiano include Lena in As You Desire Me (1932) with Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich von Stroheim, Owen Moore, and Hedda Hopper, Mrs. Higgins in the Shirley Temple musical-comedy Curly Top (1935), as a matron in the crime-drama Riffraff (1936), starring Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy, and as Suzette, Greta Garbo's devoted maid in the Edmund Goulding-directed drama Grand Hotel (1932).

When Grand Hotel was turned into a Broadway Musical in 1989, her character was renamed Rafaela Ottiano in honor of the actress, who had appeared on Broadway in 1930 in the original play version of the Vicki Baum novel, and in the subsequent movie adaptation.

Ottiano's last film was the musical comedy I Married an Angel (1942), starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. During her film career, she appeared in approximately 45 motion pictures, opposite such actors as Barbara Stanwyck, Conrad Nagel, Peter Lorre, Zasu Pitts, and Katharine Hepburn.

Personal life

Ottiano died on August 15, 1942, in her parents' Boston home, aged 54.

Partial filmography


This page was last updated at 2022-10-10 11:35 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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