Rafaela Ottiano
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Rafaela Ottiano (March 4, 1888 - August 18, 1942)[1] was an Italian-born American stage and film actress.
Born in Venice, Italy, she emigrated with her parents to the United States. She was processed at Ellis Island in 1910.[2]
Rafaela Ottiano established herself as a stage actress in Europe before arriving in in Hollywood in 1924 and began appearing in American motion pictures. Ottiano's first film was in the 1924 John L. McCutcheon-directed drama The Law and the Lady opposite actors Len Leo, Alice Lake and Tyrone Power, Sr.
Ottiano was part of the original 1928 Broadway cast of the Mae West hit Diamond Lil and reprised her role as Rita in 1933 when the play was made into a film, retitled as She Done Him Wrong and directed by Lowell Sherman. Throughout the 1930s, Rafaela Ottiano would often specialize in roles as sinister, maleveolent or spiteful women,[3] such as her role in the 1936 Tod Browning-directed horror film The Devil-Doll, opposite Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O'Sullivan.
Other notable film roles for Ottiano include "Suzette" in the 1932 Edmund Goulding-directed drama Grand Hotel, opposite Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery and Lionel and John Barrymore, "Lena" in the 1932 drama As You Desire Me opposite Garbo again and with Melvyn Douglas, Erich von Stroheim, Owen Moore and Hedda Hopper, "Mrs. Higgins" in the 1935 Shirley Temple musical-comedy Curly Top and as a matron in the 1936 crime-drama Riffraff, starrring Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy.
Rafaela Ottiano's last film role was in the 1942 musical-comedy I Married an Angel, starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. During her career in film, she would appear in approximately 45 motion pictures, opposite such actos as Barbara Stanwyck, Conrad Nagel, Peter Lorre, Zasu Pitts and Katharine Hepburn.
Rafaela Ottiano lived in the Times Square area during the Prohibition Era and never married. She died in 1942 in East Boston, Massachusetts of intestinal cancer at the age of 54.
