Ann Harding

She was raised primarily in East Orange, New Jersey and graduated from East Orange High School. Having gained her initial acting experience in school drama classes, she decided on a career as an actress and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. Due to her father's opposition to her career choice, she adopted the stage name Ann Harding. After initial work as a script reader, Harding began to win roles on Broadway and in small semiprofessional theaters, primarily in Pennsylvania. Around the late 1920s she moved to California to begin working in motion pictures, which were just beginning to include sound. Her work in plays had given her notable diction and stage presence, and she was quickly tapped for leading lady roles. After marrying conductor Werner Janssen in 1937, she worked only sporadically, with three notable roles coming in Eyes in the Night (1942), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947) and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). She worked occasionally in television between 1955 and 1965, and she appeared in two plays in the early 1960s, returning to the stage after an absence of over 30 years, including the lead in The Corn is Green in 1964 at the Studio Theater in Buffalo, New York. After her 1965 retirement, she resided in Sherman Oaks, California, where she died in 1981. Harding was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.

• Name — Ann Harding • Birth Name — Dorothy Walton Gatley • Born — 7 August 1902 • Birthplace — San Antonio, Texas, U.S. • Died — 1 September 1981 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Resting Place — Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1921–1965 • Children — 1

Harding was born Dorothy Walton Gatley at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas to George G. Gatley, a career army officer, and Elizabeth "Bessie" Walton (Crabb) Gatley. After travelling often during her early life because of her father's military career, she grew up in East Orange, New Jersey, graduated from East Orange High School, and attended Bryn Mawr College. Her father "violently opposed her profession," so Harding changed her name when she began her acting career.

Harding initially desired a business career and accepted a secretarial position with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Her work included dictating letters, and upon discovering that the company's best typists would claim the best Dictaphone recordings so they could produce the most accurate letters, Harding worked to develop tone, cadence, and diction that would produce easy to understand recordings. Her success with the Dictaphone led to work as a script analyst, which required her to review plays and movie scripts and provide recorded oral summaries. These recordings led to acting work, and she made her Broadway debut in Like a King in 1921. Three years later she found her "home theater" in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, after being directed by Hedgerow Theatre founder Jasper Deeter in The Master Builder. Over the years she returned to Hedgerow to reprise several of her roles. She was a prominent actress in Pittsburgh theatre for a time, performing with the Sharp Company and later starting the Nixon Players with Harry Bannister. In 1931, she purchased the Hedgerow Theatre building from Deeter for $5,000 and donated it to the company. In 1929, she made her film debut in Paris Bound, opposite Fredric March. With talking pictures becoming the standard, producers and directors discovered that Harding's diction and pace of speech worked well with the new sound recording technology, and she soon became a leading lady. Harding's performances were often heralded by critics, who cited her stage experience for enabling her to give her characters depth. • Illustration — Leslie Howard and Ann Harding in The Animal Kingdom, 1932 First under contract to Pathé, which was subsequently absorbed by RKO Pictures, Harding was promoted as the studio's 'answer' to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's superstar Norma Shearer. She co-starred with Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier, Myrna Loy, Herbert Marshall, Leslie Howard, Richard Dix, and Gary Cooper, and was often on loan to other studios, such as MGM and Paramount. At RKO, Harding, along with Helen Twelvetrees and Constance Bennett, comprised a trio who specialized in the "women's pictures" genre. She soon became a leading lady; she kept in shape by using the services of Sylvia of Hollywood. In Harding's second film, Her Private Affair, she portrayed a wife of questionable morality, and the film was a commercial success. During this period, she was generally considered to be one of cinema's most beautiful actresses, with her waist-length blonde hair being one of her most noted physical attributes. Films during her peak include The Animal Kingdom, Peter Ibbetson, When Ladies Meet, The Flame Within, and Biography of a Bachelor Girl. Harding, however, eventually became stereotyped as the innocent, self-sacrificing young woman. Following lukewarm responses by both critics and the public to several of her later 1930s films, she eventually stopped making movies after she married the conductor Werner Janssen in 1937. She returned to the big screen in 1942 to make Eyes in the Night and to take secondary roles in other films. She played "Mary," the estranged wife of Charlie Ruggles, in the Christmas film It Happened on Fifth Avenue in 1947. In 1956, she again starred with Fredric March in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. The 1960s marked Harding's return to Broadway after an absence of decades—having last appeared in 1927. In 1962, she starred in General Seeger, directed by and co-starring George C. Scott, and in 1964 she appeared in Abraham Cochrane ("her last New York stage appearance"). Both productions had brief runs, with the former play lasting a mere three performances (including previews). Harding made her final acting performance in 1965 in an episode of television's Ben Casey before retiring.

Harding was married twice, her husbands being: • Harry Bannister, an actor. They married in 1926 and divorced in 1932 in Reno, Nevada. A New York Times article (May 8, 1932) about the divorce stated that the actress still loved her husband and only agreed to a divorce to help Bannister's stymied career. "The proceedings were among the most unusual in the history of Nevada's liberal divorce laws," the newspaper reported. "Only through dissolution of their marriage could he escape, they said, from being overshadowed by Miss Harding's rise to stardom." The divorce also resulted in what was described as "a bitter court fight... over custody of their daughter", Jane Harding (1928–2005, married name Jane Otto). According to an interview with Harding's biographer, Scott O'Brien, Jane Harding said, "I had a terrible childhood. I hated my nurse. I never saw mother. She was always busy." • Werner Janssen, the conductor. Harding and Janssen married in 1937 and divorced in 1963, with Harding claiming that her husband had controlled her throughout their marriage, keeping her from her friends and isolating her from the world. By this marriage, Harding had two stepchildren, Alice and Werner Jr. Among Harding's romances was the novelist and screenwriter Gene Fowler. In the early 1960s, Harding began living with Grace Kaye, an adult companion, later known as Grace Kaye Harding. Ann Harding referred to Kaye as her daughter. Harding campaigned for the reelection of President Herbert Hoover in 1932.

On September 1, 1981, Harding died at the age of 79 in Sherman Oaks, California. She was survived by a daughter, named Jane Otto, and four grandchildren.

• Illustration — A plaque memorializing Ann Harding, photographed inside Hedgerow Theatre on October 7, 2023. Harding was honored with a block in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre on August 30th, 1930. Harding was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for Holiday in 1931. For her contributions to the motion picture and television industries, Harding has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—one in the Motion Pictures section at 6201 Hollywood Boulevard and one in the Television section at 6850 Hollywood Boulevard. The ceremony for both stars was held on February 8, 1960. As of October 7, 2023, there is a plaque memorializing Ann Harding inside Hedgerow Theatre.

• Date — Production — Role • October 3, 1921 – Oct 1921 — Like a King — Phyllis Weston • October 1, 1923 – May 1924 — Tarnish — Letitia Tevis • September 8, 1924 – September 1924 — Thoroughbreds — Sue • October 7, 1925 – December 1925 — Stolen Fruit — Marie Millais • March 23, 1926 – April 1926 — Schweiger — Anna Schweiger • September 28, 1926 – March 1927 — The Woman Disputed — Marie-Ange • September 19, 1927 – October 1927 — The Trial of Mary Dugan — Mary Dugan • February 28, 1962 – March 1, 1962 — General Seeger — Rena Seeger • February 17, 1964 – February 17, 1964 — Abraham Cochrane — Myra Holliday

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1955 — Crossroads — Hulda Lund — Season 1 Episode 4: "With All My Love" • Studio 57 — Martha Halstead — Season 2 Episode 9: "Vacation with Pay" • 1956 — Front Row Center — Grammie — Season 2 Episode 2: "Strange Suspicion" • G.E. Summer Originals — Season 1 Episode 9: "Great Lady" • 1959 — The DuPont Show with June Allyson — Naomi — Season 1 Episode 1: "Ruth and Naomi" • 1961 — Alfred Hitchcock Presents — Sarah Hale — Season 7 Episode 12: "A Jury of Her Peers" • 1963 — The Defenders — Helen Bernard — Season 2 Episode 28: "A Taste for Vengeance" • Burke's Law — Annabelle Rogers — Season 1 Episode 2: "Who Killed Mr. X?" • 1964 — Dr. Kildare — Mae Priest — Season 3 Episode 18: "Never Too Old for the Circus" • 1965 — Ben Casey — Edith Sommers — Season 5 Episode 5: "Because of the Needle, the Haystack was Lost"

The authorities additionally record the headings Dorothy Walton Gatley and Dorothy Walton Gatley, Her recorded language was English. She married Werner Janssen and Harry Bannister.

Ann Harding is recorded as actress.