Rafaela Ottiano

Ottiano was born on March 4, 1888, in Venice, Italy as the second child and daughter of the six children of Maddalena Polcari, a housewife, and Antonio Ottiano, a musician. Maddalena immigrated to United States in 1880, where she met Antonio who came four years after and married him in 1885. Ottiano was named after her paternal grandmother and older sister. Her sisters were Rafaela Bellizia Ottiano, who died in infancy, and Maria Fransesca "Francis" De Stefano, who moved with her to New York City on April 30, 1899. Her brothers were Pasquale "Patsies" and James, both musicians, and Augustino Ottiano. In 1910, she immigrated to the United States with her parents and then was processed at Ellis Island, and resided in Boston with her family. Ottiano worked as a saleslady in a department store before she began her acting career.: 163 Ottiano began acting at age 18 and established herself as a stage actress in Europe before arriving in Hollywood in 1924 and appearing in American movies. She appeared on Broadway in Sweeney Todd (1924), the Mae West play Diamond Lil (1928), and the play version of Grand Hotel (1930). She made her film debut in 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), with 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). In 1940, she starred in Victory, a melodramatic film which was adapted from novel by the same name by Joseph Conrad, and she was credited for her amusing incidental performance by The New York Times. 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, with actors such as Barbara Stanwyck, Conrad Nagel, Peter Lorre, Zasu Pitts, and Katharine Hepburn. 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.