Ann, born Dorothy Gatley, spent most of her childhood as an "army brat" constantly moving around before the family finally settled in New York. Ann first appeared on the stage while she spent a year attending Bryn Mawr College. She became a clerk and freelance script reader with a film company before she made her stage debut in Greenwich Village. From there she went to Broadway, and when pictures needed actors who could walk and talk, she went to Hollywood. She was signed by Pathe and made her debut, with 'Fredric March' . She continued to appear sporadically on TV in the 1960s and died at age 80 in 1981.
Her daughter Jane was born in 1928 and died in December 2005. She had another daughter, Grace Kaye Janssen, with her second husband.
Was the first major female star to join the Screen Actors Guild and later held the rank of 2nd Vice-President.
Her vehicle The Life of Vergie Winters , portraying an unwed woman who carries on an illicit love affair with a married man and bears his child, was banned in Chicago and placed on the Catholic Churchs films to be boycotted.
Was estranged from her only child Jane for several years before her death in 1981.
Unlike most film stars at that time, Ann dressed down off-camera and had little concern for her outwardly appearance. She often attended premieres without makeup or fancy hair-dos. Gossip maven Adela Rogers St. Johns claimed that Ann was "...the worst dressed woman I ever saw in my life!".
Met actor Harry Bannister while she at Detroits Garrick Theatre in 1926 as its lead actress, producer, casting director and business manager. She hired him as a last-minute replacement leading man and they married later that year (daughter Jane was born in 1928). Their divorce in 1932 led to a year-and-a-half-long custody battle.
Was once a Dictaphone operator for the welfare division of Metropolitan Life.
Attended high school in East Orange High in New Jersey.
Her father was Brig. Gen. George Grant Gatley, commander of the U.S. Rainbow Division in France during World War I. Mother Bessie Crabbe Gatleys father was also a military man. She had an older sister named Edith.
[May 4, 1933] Was saved, along with traveling companions Alexander Kirkland and Marie Lombard , from shark infested waters off the coast of Havana, Cuba, when their sailboat overturned. They were accompanied by a sailor, Magin Alvarez Prieda, who did not survive the incident.
She joined the NAACP in 1934, having been disgusted by what she considered racism in her 1932 movie Prestige. In 1935, she attended a benefit in support of the groups Anti-Lynching bill.
I believe that the actress who wears her profession on her sleeve, as it,were, outside of her work, is, as a rule, merely dramatizing herself.
When she acts off-stage as well as on, she is wasting her talent. It is,like using nectar to quench a casual thirst. .
