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Born August 7, 1902 at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, Dorothy Gatley, known professionally as Ann Harding, was the daughter of a prominent Army officer and his wife who spent her formative years traveling with her West Point educated father to wherever he was sent.

Having graduated from New Jersey’s East Orange High School, the future actress attended Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She adopted her stage name because of her father’s violent opposition to her profession.

Harding made her Broadway debut in 1921 in Like a King, alternating between Broadway and Pennsylvania theatre, marrying actor Harry Bannister in 1926, moving to Hollywood to pursue acting in movies at the dawn of the talkies. She made her film debut starring opposite Fredric March in 1929’s Paris Bound, followed by the same year’s Her Private Affair opposite Bannister and Condemned opposite Ronald Colman. Her fourth film, 1930’s Holiday, brought her first and only Oscar nomination at the 1930/31 awards. 1931’s East Lynne, in which she starred opposite Clive Brook, was an Oscar nominee for Best Picture the same year.

Harding’s 1932 Reno, Nevada divorce from Bannister made headlines. She claimed she still loved her husband, but according to court documents only through dissolution of their marriage could Bannister escape from being overshadowed by Harding’s rise to stardom.

Harding was, along with Helen Twelvetrees and Constance Bennett, one of RKO’s three top female performers of the day whose career was built around “women’s pictures”. She kept busy until her 1937 marriage to conductor Werner Janssen in such films as The Animal Kingdom opposite Leslie Howard, When Ladies Meet opposite Myrna Loy and Robert Montgomery, Gallant Lady opposite Clive Brook, Enchanted April opposite Frank Morgan, Peter Ibbetson opposite Gary Cooper and Love from a Stranger opposite Basil Rathbone.

Having taken a five-year hiatus from films after her marriage to Janssen, Harding returned in 1942’s Eyes in the Night opposite Edward Arnold. She rode out the decade in character roles, most memorably in 1947’s Christmas Eve with George Raft, George Brent, Randolph Scott and Joan Blondell. She once again had a starring role in 1950’s The Magnificent Yankee opposite Louis Calhern. After that, she made two more films and took another five-year hiatus, returning in three 1956 films, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suitt, I’ve Lived Before and Strange Intruder, her last on the big screen.

Harding worked on TV and in the theatre for the next nine years, divorcing Janssen in 1963, making her last Broadway appearance in Abraham Cochrane in 1964 and appearing on TV for the last time in a 1965 episode of Ben Casey.

Ann Harding died on September 1, 1981. She was 79.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

CONDEMNED (1929), directed by Wesley Ruggles

This sold early prison talkie set in the infamous French Devil’s Island penal colony boats four superb performances by Ronald Colman, Harding, Dudley Digges and Louis Wolheim with Colman earning an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the prisoner chosen by warden Digges to assist his reluctant wife played by Harding. Wolheim is Colman’s prison buddy. The plot is quite similar to 1984’s Mrs. Soffel based on a true story set in an early 1900s American penal colony with Mel Gibson, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann and Matthew Modine in which the warden’s wife ends up with the convict.

HOLIDAY (1930), directed by Edward H. Griffith

This first film version of Philip Barry’s 1928 play lacks the exuberance of George Cukor’s 1938 remake with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, but was quite popular in its day, landing on the National Board of Review’s list of the year’s ten best films and earning Oscar nods for Harding and the film’s adapted screenplay. Harding has Hepburn’s later role with second-billed Mary Astor in Doris Nolan’s as her sister. Robert Ames has Grant’s and Monroe Owsley has Lew Ayres’ role of the alcoholic brother. Ames is, of course, no Grant, and the chemistry between him and the two leading ladies doesn’t quite jell, but it is still immensely watchable.

CHRISTMAS EVE (1947), directed by Edwin L. Marin

Harding had her best 1940s role in old age makeup playing the mother of adopted sons George Raft, George Brent and Randolph Scott. In real life, Brent was only two years younger than Harding, Raft was a year older and Scott was three years older but it works thanks to a deft screenplay in which the three estranged men must come together to save the old lady’s fortune from being stolen by nasty nephew Reginald Denny. Joan Blondell, Virginia Field and Dolores Moran add their charms to the proceedings but it’s seventh billed Harding who steals the film and the audience’s heart as the lovable old lady.

THE MAGNIFICENT YANKEE (1950), directed by John Sturges

This was perhaps Harding’s greatest screen role. Ostensibly a biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, it’s really a love story about two old people, Holmes and his wife Fanny. Louis Calhern reprising his Broadway role opposite Dorothy Gish, is Holmes and Harding is Fanny. Calhern, a reliable character actor, was playing his first and only starring role in a film and Harding was playing her first in more than a decade. He received an Oscar nomination and she didn’t in a year in which the Best Actress competition was strong with Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson, Anne Baxter, Eleanor Parker and winner Judy Holliday in the mix.

THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT (1956), directed by Nunnally Johnson

At the end of her film career, Harding went full circle, once again playing the wife of the same actor she played opposite in her first film, 1929’s Paris Bound – Fredric March. March was billed over the title with Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in this popular film version of the best-selling novel about the lifestyle of 1950s executives. Harding was billed below the title behind Marisa Pavan and Lee J. Cobb, but ahead of Keenan Wynn on the film’s poster. She was luckier than Gene Lockhart, Gigi Perreau, Portland Mason, Arthur O’Connell and Connie Gilchrist who were left off the poster altogether.

ANN HARDING AND OSCAR

  • Holiday (1930/31) – nominated – Best Actress

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