Osvaldo Cattone

Osvaldo Inocencio Cattone Ripamonti was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 25 January 1933.[2] From the age of eight, he acted with a troupe called La Pandilla Marylin and at age nine was selected by Enrique Santos Discépolo to be part of the cast for a musical revue in the Teatro Casino, portraying the son of Aída Olivier. By 1952, he was both acting and directing in a production of La inocente de Lenormand which opened at the Teatro Regina. In 1953, he did two plays at the Instituto de Arte Moderno: Romeo and Juliet with Ricardo Vianna, Fanny Alberte, Jacinto Pérez Heredia and Alejandro Oster; and Elizabeth de Inglaterra (Elizabeth of England) by Ferdinand Bruckner with Josefina Melo, Juan Carlos Puppo, Tito Nóbili and José María Fra.[3] In the early 1950s, he married his first wife, Enriqueta, from whom he quickly separated and then began a nine-year marriage to the actress Inda Ledesma.[4] In 1954, Cattone traveled to Italy and enrolled in the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico. Four years later, he graduated, became the first South American actor with a diploma and then returned to Argentina in 1959.[2]

He returned to acting and worked on stage and on television in such productions as La visita de la anciana dama, Borrasca y Lysistrata, the Channel 13 telenovela Una vida para amarte with Gabriela Gili and Eva Franco and the series Carola y Carolina with Silvia and Mirtha Legrand.[2] In 1964, Cattone began a relationship with Amelia Bence and directed her in "Doña Rosita, la soltera".[5] He also toured throughout Argentina in the play Las mariposas son libres with Susana Giménez and Rodolfo Bebán. In 1973, he was hired to act in a Peruvian telenovela called Me llaman Gorrión and also did some theater acting in Peru. Then in 1976, he was hired to manage the Teatro Marsano[2] and began producing theatrical works.[4] Within three years he bought the theater and began nurturing the infant theater industry, inviting well-known Argentines such as Norma Aleandro, Amelia Bence, María Rosa Gallo, Eva Franco, Susana Rinaldi, China Zorrilla and others, to come and perform.[6] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Cattone produced both stage plays and television productions, such as "La loba" both a play and a television series in 1982 and La casa de enfrente a telenovela in 1985 both which starred Bence.[7]

In 2005, after more than three decades of living and working in Peru, Cattone returned to Argentina to stage a play called Afectos compartidos, which starred Analía Gadé and Nati Mistral.[8] In his later years, Cattone has returned to acting. He has completed 108 productions over his career.[4] In 2015, he was starring in Justo en lo mejor de mi Vida.[9]

He died from a prostate infection, fourteen days after his 88th birthday.[10]

• Osvaldo Cattone at IMDb