Anna Little on AllMovie

Although remembered chiefly for action melodramas and Westerns, American silent screen actress Ann Little began her show business career as a chorus girl in 1907. The California native graduated to featured roles and later became the leading soubrette with the Ferris Hartman stock company. She was discovered for the movies by Bronco Billy Anderson who included her in his Western stock company in 1911. She never starred opposite Anderson, but coupled with riding skills acquired in childhood, their association would forever typecast her as an outdoor star. Little (then known as Anna Little) didn't stay long with Anderson's Essanay company but moved on to Thomas Ince's New York Motion Picture Company and the American "Flying A" organization. She became a star with the latter, a stardom that would peak as Naturich in the second screen version of The Squaw Man (1918), the title role in Nan of Music Mountain (1917), and as William S. Hart's leading lady in Cradle of Courage (1920). Besides her many Westerns, Little also added a couple of serials to her resumé, including The Black Box (1915) and Lightning Bryce (1919), the latter introducing former cowpuncher Jack Hoxie as her leading man. Like almost all the action heroines of the 1910s, Little saw her career decline in the early '20s and she left films altogether in 1923. Divorced from actor Alan Forrest, Ann Little later managed the landmark Sunset Strip hotel, the Chateau Marmont, which she always maintained was "15 minutes from everywhere."