Ann Little(1891-1984)
- Actress
Unlike many serial heroines, Ann Little actually was a daughter of the
West. Born in a small town near the foot of northern California's Mt.
Shasta, she was raised on a ranch in the shadow of the great mountain.
After graduating high school, she joined a traveling stock company,
winding up in a play in San Francisco. She entered the film business
making one-reel westerns with Broncho Billy Anderson, and soon
relocated to Southern California, where she made a variety of films for
many different companies. Since she was proficient at such outdoors
activities as riding, shooting and swimming, she began to get more work
in wsterns, especially as Indian maidens, which pleased her no end as
she had engaged in a lifelong study of Indian culture (her faithful
portrayal of a young Indian girl in The Squaw Man (1918) won her the
respect and friendship of the Indian extras in that film). She began
making serials during her tenure at Universal, where she would make the
first (in 1915) of six. By 1917, however, she had tired of westerns,
and relocated to New York City to try her hand at straight drama.
However, she find herself back in the serial field, although this time
even more successfully, and returned to Calilfornia. Her career was
going great guns when, in 1925, she gave it all up and left the
industry. Nobody knew why and she apparently never told anybody she was
planning to do it; she just upped and did it. There were rumors that
she found religion (Christian Science) and left to devote herself to
religious work, but, although she still lived in the Los Angeles area,
she refused to speak of her years in Hollywood and never gave a reasn
for leaving. She died in 1984.
